Turned Tables: The Long Story
by Zettel
Summary: A relationship, a cover relationship, a cover-cover relationship-and then a new partnership. An AU story that parallels canon up until *Nemesis*, but turns it inside-out: The Intersect is fake: meant to lure out Fulcrum, and to test Sarah Walker's loyalties. Special Agent Charles Carmichael is to pose as the Intersect and as Walker's asset. See A/N Chap 1.
1. Chapter 1: Boy Meets Girl

**A/N** I usually try to keep these things brief, but…this will be a complicated story. So it is important to read this.

Since there was a _small_ chorus of requests for me to continue my one-shot, _Turning Tables_ , I have decided to do so, but by moving over to a new story, this one, _Turned Tables_.

If you have read my one-shot, "Turning Tables", you have the _basic_ idea.

But you should read it in its new form (it is Chapter 1, below), since I have added a bit to it and since that one-shot (a happy little piece) has been reinterpreted and problematized here.

This story is AU, but hews fairly close to canon events up until the end of _Nemesis_. The canon has been reimagined—primarily, there has been a profound shift in Chuck's role in it, in his POV. There has been one in Casey's too, and other characters, like Graham, Beckman, Ellie, Devon, Morgan et al., but those shifts are easier to correct for.

The story will focus on Chuck and Sarah's precarious new partnership with frequent call-backs or flashbacks to reimagined canon events. Once it gets started in earnest, the basic unit of the story will be the missions that Chuck and Sarah undertake as new partners, the first of which begins in Chapter 3. Between mission will be interludes.

I recommend reading the first two chapters as a pair.

Be careful to pay attention to dates and locations.

If you are reading this after it has gotten going or after it is finished, don't let that keep you from reviewing. I'd love to know what you think and I almost always respond to reveiws.

Don't own Chuck.

* * *

 **Turned Tables**

 _Prelude_

* * *

November 30, 2007  
Burbank, California  
Wake Up Coffee Shop

* * *

CHAPTER 1 Boy Meets Girl

* * *

Sarah sat stock-still. Dumfounded. Her fabled icy demeanor shattered like a fallen icicle on a sidewalk.

Chuck sat across from her, still the man she knew—lanky, gregarious, curly-headed. His smile was the same mix of "Who, me?" and "Here I am". But his eyes were newly complicated, as if their brown depths had been stirred. Newly complicated—at least to her.

Between them, on the coffee shop table, was Chuck's CIA badge. He was a special agent. He had always been a special agent. The whole Intersect-in-his-head thing had been a set-up. It had been a massive deception created by Graham as a way of luring Fulcrum into the light and finishing the rogue spies once and for all. But Graham had also had doubts about her—her relationship to Bryce and Bryce's relationship to Fulcrum. So, Graham added a layer of complication: the supposed host of the Intersect was to become her asset. It was supposed to be a test of her loyalty—to the US, to the CIA, to Graham. Graham was worried he had lost his enforcer.

Graham thought they would get clearer about her relationship to Bryce if the supposed handler/asset relationship between Chuck and her was boyfriend/girlfriend. So that was what Graham ordered. Graham used Chuck from the CIA—he brought in John Casey from the NSA to be on the scene and keep tabs on her. Beckman's interest in Fulcrum made the NSA a player at the table.

The battle with Fulcrum had been real. So had most of the missions or at least parts of most of the missions.

Eventually, Bryce showed up, gifted to them by Fulcrum. He tried to pass himself off as loyal to the CIA and as a double-agent against Fulcrum. Sarah had believed it. Bryce tried to get her to leave with him—and it turned out he was planning to turn her or kill her. He was planning to return later for the Intersect, for Chuck.

But Sarah, despite the cost of the decision, had chosen not to go with Bryce. She had chosen to stay with Chuck—even though she was furious with herself about the Incident, their kiss in front of the 'bomb', unsure how she could re-establish herself as Chuck's handler.

Except now she didn't have to. Graham was satisfied that she was not loyal to Bryce, that she was not a Fulcrum agent. The 'Intersect Project' that never really was now really wasn't. They had made a major breakthrough against Fulcrum. Bryce had been captured and he had given up the major players. It was over. She would have new orders soon, although Graham had intimated that he would be willing to let her exercise considerable discretion over her new assignment, and her new partner (if she wanted one). Graham and Casey had explained some of this to her at Casey's apartment. Chuck had been there. She had gaped at him.

Chuck walked her from Casey's to his car—a gorgeous BMW 7 Series, silver. He wanted her to understand his part in it all. He wanted her to understand how he felt. But he hadn't really started talking until they were seated at the table and their coffee ordered.

"...So, you see, Sarah, there really was a thing under our cover thing for me…" He looked at her, a hint of a plea in his eyes.

"Wait. You can resist the truth-serum too?"

He closed his eyes. Then he nodded. "I had to be in complete control of what I 'revealed' to you when we were supposed to be under the influence of the serum. If I hadn't been, I would have been compromised."

"No, wait, say that again: _you_ would have been compromised?" She wanted to laugh. She wanted to rage. She wanted to cry. "All this time, our cover dating was just a cover for you. You were cover cover dating me?"

"Well, yeah, and being the Intersect—pretending to be. But, yeah, cover dating you was my cover."

Her mind was still racing. "And Ellie and Devon?"

"They are a real CIA couple. She is my sister. She is a CIA doctor, but she is so good they occasionally use her in the field. She was perfect for this. You see, our family is sort of a spy family. Our mom is a CIA agent. My sister really does like you, by the way, and she's hoping you'll forgive her and still be her friend."

Sarah was reeling. It was like she was a shirt someone turned inside out and put back on. Everything was different. Everything was the same. Everything was wrong. Everything was…

"What is it you want to say to me, Chuck, I can see something in your eyes."

His grin was apologetic and needy all at the same time. "The same thing I've always wanted to say to you, Sarah."

She leaned in toward him; she couldn't help herself, as outraged as she was, she found him compelling.

"I want to be your partner."

She sat back and could feel her outrage gaining in strength, burning in her chest. _That_ was what he had to say to her?

"Oh," he added, stumbling over the words a little, "I also wanted to tell you that I love you."

Sarah was dumbfounded. Her icy demeanor was shattered. But her feelings were there, like they had always been since she first talked to a nerd—to what she thought was a nerd—at the Buy More. She could have him. He had changed her. He couldn't have done that if he was a spy like Bryce or the other spies she had known. She didn't understand it all. It might take weeks, months…She smiled to herself. It might take years. The feelings were there. She didn't know him but she knew _him_.

She picked up Chuck's badge and looked at it. "So, what is your real name?"

Before he answered, she suddenly wondered if she could believe him. He'd been lying to her for months. She felt a rising wave of seasickness. Everything she thought she knew, her bedrock, had turned to sand, hadn't it?


	2. Chapter 2: Russian Novels, Pulp Fiction

**A/N1** An important scene-setting chapter.

Don't own Chuck.

* * *

 **Turned Tables**

Prelude

* * *

March 20, 2007  
CIA Headquarters  
Langley, Virginia

* * *

CHAPTER 2 Russian Novels, Pulp Fiction

* * *

Special Agent Charles Carmichael was seated in a metal chair at a large, otherwise empty wooden table. He felt anything but special.

He was in the conference room that adjoined the spacious, overwhelming office of Langston Graham, Director of the CIA. Charles had a thick file in front of him. Very thick. It had been there for several hours as he worked through it. His vision had gotten blurry and his back was hurting from sitting hunched for so long.

He sat back in his chair, trying to relax, and retrieved the photograph that had been on top of the papers in the file. He had pushed it aside after studying it before looking at anything else in the file. He closed his eyes for a moment to refocus his vision. He was looking at a photograph of Sarah Walker, Graham's legendary ghost enforcer. She was staring into the camera as if she was daring it to reveal anything about her in recording her image.

Charles had heard of Walker, of course. After the Farm, it had mostly been in whispers. Ice Queen. Enforcer. But at the Farm, it had been different. She was omnipresent—or her records were. Like every other agent there, he had been chasing Walker's scores in almost every area of training. In some, like _weapons training_ and _hand-to-hand_ , he had known before he started that he not only would not best her scores, he would not even get anywhere near them. He had been right.

He had bested her scores—and everyone else's in the Farm's history—in all the technical areas. Gadgets, and gizmos and whatzzits—computers, surveillance equipment, comms, earwigs and so on, all danced at his command.

But the biggest surprise of all, he had equaled her composite of scores for _deep cover_. That had not only surprised Chuck, it had surprised all his instructors. He had not seemed a candidate for success in that area.

Charles had no illusion, now that he had a photograph of Walker in hand, that he was as attractive a man as she was a woman. Charles had eyes to see. But he also knew that he was a gifted actor, settling into a part not only easily, but always by managing to find the reality in it for himself, so that the acting was never wholesale lying, but was instead a way of inflecting or deflecting or reflecting the truth. At bottom, Charles was not a manipulator, and that, paradoxically, made him effective in the roles he had played on the Farm and afterward when he had begun to work as an agent. He had an impressive, if a brief record of infiltrations—bloodless and successful.

He knew that he was attractive—not in the world-historical way the woman in the photograph was attractive—but he was attractive. That helped. He was also a gifted conversationalist, and that may have been his greatest strength. He could talk spontaneously—even fall into a John Cusack sort of rant—without giving himself away. He wasn't sure how he did it, but he could somehow spiral safely. When it happened, he was, he knew, really spiraling, but he had just enough control of just the right sort over the spiral to keep himself from crashing and burning.

He looked again at the photograph. Although he had always been attracted to brunettes, he found that the photograph of blonde Special Agent Walker made his chest hurt. That alone would have been bad, but even worse were his sweaty palms and the nightmarish visions that reading the file kept causing—they were the source of his blurry vision than more than fatigue.

Sarah Walker was stunningly beautiful, no doubt: but she was starkly terrifying. Just the photographs of kills in the file, even black and white and grainy as they mostly were, had Charles thankful that he has chosen not to eat before meeting with Graham. He might very well have made a mess all over Walker's file and all over the heavy wooden conference table. He felt a little queasy anyway.

Walker was a killer. Or she was good at killing. _Was there a difference_?

There was no evidence of wanton cruelty in the file, no evidence of her stepping over her boundaries or beyond mission parameters in disturbing or evil ways. She was not a torturer, not a sadist. No signs that she enjoyed killing were anywhere in the file. But there were corpses littered through it. When Graham had deemed that a target needed to be terminated, and when the termination looked impossible, he had sent Walker. Each time she returned and each time the target was terminated. Charles had no illusions. He knew there were specialists in 'wet work' among his fellow Special Agents. He just hadn't ever met one—at least, not that he knew. Walker made the term 'wet work' seem even more like the shameful euphemism it was. Her work was wetter than wet. Soaking.

Charles needed not to dwell on that too much. He could feel his palms sweating again.

Two other striking things about the file were that although she was Special Agent Sarah Walker, that was not her real name. In fact, her real name was not anywhere in the file, not even at the beginning. There was no proof that she had ever been born or that her birth took place anywhere on earth. Charles had a momentary fantasy of her as an avenging angel with a flaming sword, forced into a life of exile amongst mortals. He shook his head; the fantasy was not helping. Flames.

She had been recruited as Jenny Burton, but there was a handwritten notation in the file—Graham's, it bore his initials—that the name was itself an alias and that her birth name was unknown, even to the CIA. The exact circumstances of that initial recruitment were not spelled out in the file, but Charles realized that Jenny Burton—Sarah Walker—had generated those remarkable scores at the Farm at a time when she should have been at her prom in…where was it? Charles looked back at the file...San Diego. Charles felt a little more inadequate and a little less proud of his own scores. He had been a Stanford graduate before he had gone to the Farm. Sarah Walker had been a girl there. Grim.

He flipped back to the front section of the file again. Walker's IQ scores were very high. But her psyche evaluation was, well, not stellar. 'Cool', 'distant', 'secretive personally, not just professionally', 'detached from her own past', 'wholly compartmentalized', 'emotionally unavailable, to herself or others', 'verbal but unable to verbalize', 'omnicompetent agent, incompetent human being'. These words and phrases jumped again to Charles's eyes. Given them, and the body-littered file, it seemed like the woman had to be a sociopath—or at least a sociopath in training.

But there were other things that counterbalanced that, that made her seem a mystery or paradox. She had a proven track record of saving people, getting them out of horrible situations, often at great danger to herself. She was willing to overstep boundaries or ignore mission parameters for the sake of innocents. She had worked for a year on a Secret Service detail protecting the President. _That was strange_. It was also true that many of the corpses littered through the file were the result self-defense or the defense of others. Walker had killed them to save others or herself.

In the last couple of years, she had been partnered with another well-known Special Agent, Bryce Larkin. Charles had known Larkin at Stanford—but that was a story for another day. The file showed that it had typically been Walker who had saved Larkin when missions had gone south. He noticed another handwritten notation of Graham's: "Now a real couple". It was written next to what would have been the fourth mission they had shared.

So, Walker had human feelings, or at least human needs, after all. Sometimes. At some point, for a reason that Charles could not reconstruct from the file, she and Larkin had parted company. Charles tried to keep himself from any mental picture of Walker and Larkin together, but he was not entirely successful. His chest hurt him again.

On the last mission in the file, Walker had been assigned a handler, an Agent named Ryker. But other than the notation of the assignment, there was nothing more in the file on that mission. There had been follow-up inquiries about her from Ryker, but so far as Charles could tell, Graham had ignored them.

Walker was now back in the States, presumably in DC, awaiting another assignment, her next mission.

Charles wondered for the umpteenth time since he sat down with the file why he was asked to review it. Graham had handed it to him, waved him into the conference room and then shut the door.

Why was he reading her file? Walker was so far up the food chain in the CIA from him that it hardly made sense to call it a _chain_. That suggested that the difference between her and him was one of degree. Really, Charles knew, the difference between them was one of kind. She was a kind of agent he was not and could not be. A kind of agent, truth be told, he did not want to be. He was not a killer; he knew he wasn't wired that way.

}o{

Charles ruminating about his possibly faulty wiring when Langston Graham finally entered the room. He stopped for a moment and surveyed Charles head to toe, as if calculating, and then he sighed and sat down. He had a cup of coffee in his hands, steam rising from it. He offered Charles no coffee. He sipped noisily at it for a moment while continuing his survey of Charles. Charles felt like a knife offered to someone at a gunfight.

"Special Agent Carmichael." It was not a question or a form of address. More a resigned comment. The way Graham said 'special' sounded anything but.

"Uh, yes, sir?"

"I've brought you in for a mission, one that will make use of your…unique…skill set. You are, I believe, the smartest field agent working for me. Your test scores are not just off the chart, they make the chart look silly. Your memory is phenomenal. The psych doctors tell me your memory is genuinely eidetic—with a peculiarly long life. Everything you see or hear sticks, and sticks for a long time, maybe forever."

Graham's tone was declarative, but his gaze interrogative. Grudging admiration crept into his voice.

Charles shrugged. "I guess so. They're the doctors. I just know I remember…I remember too damn much really. More a curse than a blessing."

"You've studied Walker's file?"

"Yeah, yeah, I have. It's as thick as a Russian novel and reads a lot like one too. Actually, it makes Russian novels look like pulp fiction."

Charles tried to grin but couldn't get his lips to obey—partly because Graham intimidated him, partly because he did not find the file or the woman represented by the file in any way funny. He was swept over by a feeling of sadness and weariness. He had only been with the Company for a while and he was already planning to get out.

His mother had been a life-long Company employee, although he did not really know much about her life as an agent, he was reasonably sure there was a file somewhere on her that was…not unlike the one on the table in front of him. His sister was a doctor for the CIA, a neurologist, the best. She was more than that, though. She was also used as a field agent and she sometimes went on missions herself. It was hard to be the third best CIA agent in the family—a distant third.

"What do you make of her?"

"She's remarkable. Scary, to be honest. I can't imagine what it would be to know no other life but this one, but I don't think she knows any other. She is a legend and for good reason. She's so good she gets away with being a wildcard. She gets her missions done—and usually, that means a body bag gets zipped somewhere. But she often goes off script, rescuing hostages or protecting people she had not been assigned to protect. I don't know how to put all that together, but the first impression of the file, the impression that she is a killer, while…correct, does not seem to me to be…exhaustive. She's scary…and fascinating."

Graham nodded, his eyes on Charles but his focus inward. "Do you think she is a candidate for burnout?"

"Yes."

"You say that awfully quickly, Carmichael, and with no qualification. That's not like you. Where's the stammering and the handwringing, the infamous Carmichael Process?" There was a note of teasing contempt in Graham's tone.

"You recruited her when she was seventeen, sir. Ten years ago. In that time, she has gone almost 200 missions." _172 to be exact_. "And many of those have been missions in which her life was on the line and she was alone, sometimes in extended deep cover. Even the times when she had partners or a partner are times when her pace was even more frenetic than ever, more missions, more risk. This bizarre CAT Squad interval ended in disaster, betrayal. I don't know about Larkin…but I figure the story is similar.

"Pardon me for putting it this way, sir, but the question about Walker is not whether she is a candidate for burnout, but why she is not a total burnout already. That she is functioning at all is darkly miraculous. I find it disturbing and amazing." Charles surprised himself. He was intimidated by Graham but that was not going to keep from telling the truth. "I really don't understand why she was…" he looked at Graham nervously but pushed forward, "...why she was kept working at this pace. Why did…why did you…do it?"

Graham looked incensed for a moment but he composed his countenance quickly. After a moment, he raised one eyebrow. Charles plunged forward.

"She needed time off. She needed something else in her life. As far as the file shows, she works and she…works. I assume she sleeps and eats, but it is hard to imagine her doing either…"

"What if I told you that she would not take time off? That she insisted on a steady stream of missions. That she said she fell apart when she had time on her hands?"

"Like Sherlock Holmes' _seven percent solution_?"

Graham looked lost.

"Holmes couldn't stand time between cases. He would take a seven percent solution of cocaine to keep himself from shaking apart during downtime. He was like an engine idling violently, tearing itself apart."

Graham nodded. "Yes, I guess it is a little like that. She needed to work. She did not want time off. I don't know exactly why. She didn't explain it to me and I never asked. She wanted to work and…I had work for her. Only she had a chance to complete many of those missions."

Charles began to get irritated. "But didn't her psych evals worry you? The doctors were consistently recommending that she be given time off. Some even suggested transfer to a desk job—at least for a while. Two suggested that she be encouraged to find a job outside of intelligence work. One thought she might be a danger to herself. He was the outlier—but, still…" Charles thumbed through the file to find the eval form he was referring to but then he realized Graham was not interested in seeing it.

"I know what the evals say, Carmichael. Walker was told what the evals say. She knew and she demanded to continue going on missions. What was I supposed to do?"

"Refuse?"

Graham stabbed Charles with his glance. Charles shut up. But his question hung in the air between them.

Charles shifted ground. "Sir, why are we talking about Agent Walker? Why have I been shown her file?"

A shadow passed over Graham's face. He pursed his lips and looked down at the file in front of Charles.

"Walker's partner, Bryce Larkin, was a double-agent. He had been recruited by Fulcrum."

"Fulcrum? I have heard that name."

"It is an organization of double-agents, and they have infiltrated every part of the US intelligence community. We know they are in the CIA. We know they are in the NSA. But we do not know who they are." Graham's concern was palpable, real.

He continued. "Let me back up for a minute, Carmichael. A few years ago, the CIA and the NSA were involved in a joint effort to develop a computer that could be implanted into the human mind. Not physically implanted, by surgical means, but…what is the term?...uploaded into the brain."

Charles started to snicker. Graham shot him a hard look. "What, Carmichael?"

"That's crazy. It would never work."

"Well, there is a whole cohort of CIA and NSA computer engineers who do not think so…Well, who didn't think so. It turns out," Graham clearly hated to say this in light of Charles's snickering, "that they couldn't make it work.

"But here's what matters right now. Fulcrum found out about the project and they have somehow come to believe that it was successful, that the implant is possible. We called the project 'The Intersect'. Fulcrum thinks the Intersect exists. We allowed them, encouraged them, to believe that and, so far, they do. They sent Bryce Larkin to steal it. He did, or he stole what he thought was the Intersect (it was really just a file full of meaningless pictures cycling at high speed) but he was killed just after he stole it."

"We are worried…I am worried that Walker has been turned too. She was still partnered with Larkin during the time when we think he was turned. Do you think Walker could be turned?"

Charles shook his head and shrugged simultaneously. "I don't know. I guess I doubt it. She seems wholly identified with the job. Her loyalties are to the job, to you, to the CIA. I don't mean that she doesn't care about her country—she does. But I think that she is ordinarily laser-focused on the mission and its objective, and is not spending her time thinking about how it affects the country. I assume she lets you worry about that. But, for her to turn would be for her to lose who she is— _all_ she is and has been. It just seems…unlikely to me."

"But you couldn't rule it out?"

Charles wasn't sure what Graham wanted. "Do you mean 'Is it impossible'? No, it is not impossible. But it is unlikely."

Graham put his hands in front of him, tented together, the fingers of each hand touching the mirroring finger of the other. He sat for a minute or two in silence.

"Let me explain to you why you are here, Agent Carmichael. We have a mission for you, a mission with two objectives. One, we want you to pretend to have uploaded the Intersect. You'll be tasked with luring Fulcrum into the open. Two, we want you to get to know Agent Walker, and we want you to determine whether she has been turned by Fulcrum.

"This will be an extraordinarily demanding mission. We are going to assign Agent Walker to you, making her believe that you have, in fact, uploaded the Intersect, and that you did it unintentionally, after having been sent it by Bryce Larkin. We will set it up to look like Larkin emailed it to you and you opened the email with no idea what was happening. We will also send another agent, from the NSA, to be the other half of the Intersect team. His name is John Casey. He is the agent, by the way, who killed Bryce Larkin. He will join you after you are introduced to Agent Walker. In fact, we will stage his entrance on the scene to try to make Agent Walker protective of you.

"You will become the target of Fulcrum. That will put you in danger. We will also use the team on missions as appropriate, against Fulcrum or in whatever way might be necessary, even though you will be monitoring Agent Walker constantly. But the hardest part of your mission—well, other than staying alive—will likely be getting Agent Walker to believe that you are the Intersect and getting her to trust you. Agent Walker is not…um…a poster child for trust. She is the daughter of a con man. She is no fool. But your instructors at the Farm tell me you have a special capacity to get people to trust you. Agent Walker will put that to its severest test, I expect.

"Your sister, Eleanor, and her husband, Devon, will be part of the mission. We've decided it will work best if they pose as boyfriend and girlfriend, not as husband and wife…"

Graham went on to explain Charles's role as Ellie's live-in, loser brother, and to explain his dead-end job at the Buy More, a large electronics box store. The store's staff was to be composed of agents and actors contracted by the CIA. The store would be a functioning business, despite the nature of its employees. Other than getting to spend time with his sister and her husband, the best news for Charles was that his analyst buddy, Martin Gomez, would be assigned the cover of Charles's best friend.

Graham laid out more of the detail of the mission and what Charles should expect. He underscored that Walker's role as his enforcer meant that she spent very little time around CIA headquarters and that there was no reason to think she would have ever seen or heard of anyone who would be part of the mission, other than Casey. She would know Casey by reputation. Charles, unlike Casey, had no reputation that preceded him. Ellie and Devon split time between the coasts, and they were never at Langley. Graham's people had been over all the available records. Sarah Walker had no contact with anyone on the team before.

As Graham wrapped up, he cast a judgmental eye at Charles. "You are the natural choice for this mission. That doesn't mean I am happy about it. You know, Carmichael, you are an amalgam of the worst agent I have ever seen and one of the best. Calling you a spy seems like an equivocation on the word, 'spy'. Even stranger, it is not like the worst and the best in you simply average out. Because you are not an average agent. You are the worst and one of the best. You are about to meet a woman who is simply the best. Good luck. You're going to need it, Carmichael. Fulcrum doesn't miss much. Walker never does. If she is a double-agent, you will be in serious jeopardy…

"Tomorrow you will meet with John Casey to go over more details of the mission. He is the senior agent in charge. The two of you will head to Burbank together to get the initial set-up completed. Eleanor and her husband will be out the next day. Your cover will Charles-Chuck-Bartowski."

Charles Carmichael was about to become Chuck Bartowski. As he got up to leave the office, he glanced again at the photograph of Walker laying on top of the file. He didn't need to see it again. It was permanently stored in his memory, like her file. But he glanced anyway. He gulped. This was so _not_ going to be a piece of cake.

* * *

 **A/N2** Stay tuned: We jump forward from here in time to the first mission our new partners undertake, "The Anathema Mission" . See you then!


	3. Chapter 3: Injurious Vision?

**A/N1** This story will unspool slowly. We jump now to Chuck and Sarah's first mission as partners—after Burbank. Thanks for the interest in the story. I'd love to hear from you about it.

Don't own Chuck. No money made.

* * *

 **Turned Tables**

 _The Anathema Mission_

* * *

Friday, January 4, 2008  
Batumi, Georgia

* * *

CHAPTER 3 Injurious Vision?

* * *

Sarah sighted down the scope of her sniper rifle—and as he watched her, Chuck recalled a line of Jim Morrison's poetry:

 _The sniper's rife is an extension of his eye. He kills with injurious vision_.

Other than the pronoun problem—Morrison hadn't imagined Sarah Walker, clearly—it fit. Chuck was having a hard time swallowing, a hard time breathing. He knew she did this sort of thing; he knew she was good at it. He could recall every mission and every assassination she had performed, although she was unaware, still, of his total recall of her CIA history.

"Can you see the place where he's supposed to be?" Chuck asked hoping her answer would be, "No."

"Yes, clear as a bell."

Not only could she see the place, Chuck thought, she sounded calm and fascinated, like she was bird watching with binoculars and finally could see the goldfinch nest. Chuck loved her—but she scared him. He had thought that if Graham made them partners—she had requested it and Graham signed off on it—their missions would be constrained by what Chuck was good at. But no. Their first mission had taken them to Batumi, Georgia, not the Georgia of the Atlanta and Athens, of the Bulldogs and R. E. M., but the outer edge of civilization as he knew it. In the distance, he could hear chanting from the Orthodox church at the end of the narrow Batumi street- _basso profondo_ chanting, deep and mesmerizing and religious and…absolutely the wrong soundtrack to watch Sarah prepare to assassinate a man.

"Do you understand the song?" Chuck asked after watching in silence for a few more minutes.

Sarah looked at him uncomprehendingly and then she noticed the singing, apparently for the first time: "'Eternal Memory', I think."

She seemed determined to be nonchalant, but her eyes clouded. She went back to tinkering with the scope.

"Gah. Not the best thing for them to be singing while we plan...this." Chuck gestured at the rifle and then looked down at his black shoes with their thick, soft soles. Spy shoes. Sensible shoes—for killers. Sarah was looking at him as he looked at his shoes. She seemed puzzled and, now that her eyes were away from the scope, unsettled.

They were in a dingy room in an abandoned building. There was one window, overlooking a squalid square in the old part of the city. They had been in Batumi for two long days, keeping mostly inside, in their tiny hotel room. Sarah had spent most of the time working out her shot carefully and going over Chuck's part of the plan. The rest of the time she had been silent and withdrawn.

They were keeping a low profile, exposing themselves minimally. They'd eaten their meals in the room or waited until dark to go out to a café, always choosing one at a distance from their hotel. Sarah had not been in the mood to chat and so the meals, in or out, had only the sound of cutlery or of other couples' talk and laughter as a soundtrack. Batumi was cold in January, and disconcerting, because the plant life, there on the edge of the Black Sea, was subtropical—there were palm trees. It had snowed a little their first night, and Chuck had tried to get Sarah interested in the incongruity of ice hanging from palm fronds, but she was unresponsive. Her normal comment was: "Focus, Chuck. We aren't on vacation." _We sure as hell aren't._

Chuck sighed, he hoped silently. But he noticed Sarah's eyebrow arch minutely as she gazed in the scope again, and he knew it was because she heard him, not because of anything she saw or did not see. He noticed that she colored a bit and that her movements, a moment ago so habitual and assured, became self-conscious and tentative. Chuck had seen her handle a gun. He had seen her shoot people in self-defense or in defense of him or of Casey when they were part of 'Team Bartowski', but he had never witnessed her do this. Perhaps Bryce had, but Chuck was sure that Bryce's witness would never have made her self-conscious. _Bryce_ : that was another on the long list of things they still had not talked about since becoming partners.

They hadn't talked about much of anything since becoming partners. Sarah had a first seemed excited about the idea, happy about it even, but once it had been made official, she seemed to have become less and less excited. Unhappy. Now, she seemed like she regretted it altogether. Chuck sighed again. He had told her he loved her. She had not said anything in response or said anything about not saying anything in response. He might as well have declared his love to a statue. _Sigh_.

"Chuck, if you do that again, I'll turn the rifle and I'll shoot you. I have a silencer on it already. No one would hear the shot, especially not you."

Chuck smiled at her, expecting her to smile in return. She did not smile. She did not look at him. She kept staring through the scope. She was refusing to look at him. A moment later, apparently satisfied, she made a couple of notes in the small notebook on the table beside the rifle and then she broke the rifle down rapidly, stowed it in its metallic case. She did all that without a glance in his direction. She stood up and headed out the door, case in hand. Their hotel was just across a narrow alley behind the building.

"I'm going to get a shower. We can grab something to eat once the sun goes down. That'll be soon."

Chuck had come to depend on her internal clock and her internal compass. She knew intuitively _when_ and _where_ she was. If that intuitive sense had been used for some other purpose than this one, Chuck would have been duly impressed—and maybe he was, anyway, a little, ok, a lot—but mostly it made her even more frightening. She was a self-conscious weapon with an internal GPS and internal atomic clock. He had sort of known she could do these things when they were in Burbank. But there they were used to protect him, not assassinate someone. Chuck wondered again whether becoming her partner had been a good idea. Could his feelings for her withstand exposure to the spy she was outside of Burbank?

"Ok. Well, I am ready, so whenever you are." He said this to her back; she was almost out the door.

Once they got to their room in the hotel, she went into the small bathroom but left the door ajar. Chuck could see into the bathroom if he looked up, since he was facing the mirror over the dresser and since the mirror faced the bathroom. He could not see all of her. He tried to keep his eyes on the floor, to study his shoes some more, but he found his gaze bobbing up every few seconds, and he got a brief glimpse of her unhooking her bra, then of one of her long legs propped on the bathroom counter as she rolled off a sock. He forced his eyes down again. Up they bobbed again—he saw her beautiful, sculpted back for a split second. Then he realized that she had repositioned herself to turn on the shower, and that she could now see that he could see her. She looked at him over her shoulder, and she bit her lower lip. Then she smiled, a small, taut smile. But above the smile her eyes were sad. She pushed the door closed.

Chuck repositioned himself. His pants had become uncomfortably tight. She might kill the target tomorrow but she was likely going to kill him first. He wanted to touch her. He was dying to touch her. He really hadn't touched her, other than an awkward hug when they parted company in Burbank, since she had kissed him in front of what they both had taken to be a bomb. Since then, so much had changed. She had, for one thing, kissed Bryce. She had kissed Bryce more recently than she had kissed him. Granted, Bryce was now in a supermax cell, a confessed traitor. Granted, he had planned to turn or kill Sarah and then to capture or kill Chuck, but still…Bryce's was the more recent kiss.

And, other than cover hello and goodbye kisses, she had only kissed him a couple of times total—the bomb kiss and the kiss in the Weinerlicious supply closet. He had no idea what she was thinking about him and her now. He had thought they would be partners _and_ a couple, a real couple. He no longer knew if they were much more than they had been when they were handler and asset, cover girlfriend and cover boyfriend, back in Burbank. Nothing between them seemed different and yet everything seemed different. He was in Georgia. He was with Sarah. He was her partner. She refused to talk. He was lost.

}o{

Sarah saw Chuck peeking in the mirror. She could see both his reluctance about peeking and his excitement at what he saw. Reluctance and excitement: that captured what she felt and had been feeling since they had boarded the military flight that took them to Batumi.

Graham had not expected her to want a partner. His offer to allow her discretion about having a partner and about who that partner might be had been empty, because he was sure that after Ryker and after Bryce—and, frankly, after Chuck—she would be overjoyed to be his lone wolf again, his wildcard enforcer…

}o{

"So, Sarah, I'm sorry about how all this played out—sorry that you got played in it—but I had to be sure that you were still with us, still CIA, and that Bryce hadn't turned you somewhere along the line."

Graham had smiled after saying that, actually goddamned smiled. She had felt her anger, her outrage, building. But she also knew that there was little she could do about any of it now. Still, that Graham could have thought her capable of betrayal, after ten years and all she had given up, and after all the things she had done for him, the sometimes-awful things, well, it made her crazy. How could he have thought that? How could he have subjected her to months of scrutiny and evaluation, scrutiny and evaluation she never suspected, conducted by the man she had fallen—the man she had feelings for?

She was the one betrayed.

Graham had crossed his arms and waited for her to tell him what she wanted, now that she was back in his good graces (the smug _sonovabitch_ ). Sarah had been waffling about this very thing. She wanted Chuck to be her partner. She liked herself when she was with him. She felt safe—safer, anyway. She trusted him. That burned a little-ok, a lot, since she should have thought of him as betraying her too. But she couldn't manage that thought, except when Chuck made her angry. He could do that. He could provoke her to feelings, virtually anytime and anywhere. She had no idea how he did that. He did it, though.

"I want you to make Chuck—Agent Carmichael—my partner." She smiled innocently at Graham while she directed a few choice curses at him mentally. She'd see how well _that_ request went down.

As expected, Graham balked. He uncrossed his arms and she thought for a moment his eyes crossed. He was surprised, and a millisecond after that, he was furious. But he was doing his best to hide it all as if it were nothing more than a change in his seated posture.

"Really? Even after his role in Burbank? He may seem like a good partner in some ways after Burbank, but you and he are not spies of the same sort, Agent Walker. In the field, doing your sort of work, he will not only be a liability to the mission, he will be a danger to you."

"My sort of work…sir? Couldn't we be assigned missions that fit our… _combined_ skill set?"

Sarah felt her heart sink. This was how Graham was going to play it. Play her. Again. She was still getting played but now to her face. Graham would let her have Chuck as a partner, but only on pain of rubbing Chuck's nose in what she all too often had done for Graham. She knew Chuck must have known about some of that. But knowing about it was one thing. Watching her do it was another. Chuck had told her he loved her. She'd not responded. She'd maneuvered to keep him from saying it again because she had no idea how to respond. Still, his saying that he loved her ranked as her all-time favorite moment of her life, the best and sweetest thing that had ever happened to her, even if she had barely reacted at the time. Graham almost certainly had no idea that Chuck felt that way about her, but he was going to ruin it for her, force Chuck to come to see who she really was. To see it with his own eyes, on the spot. He'd never say those words to her again. She'd never get to figure out how to respond. She was suddenly so sad she couldn't breathe.

Graham had done what she feared. A few days later, she and Chuck were sitting together at a table, being briefed on the mission that would take them to Georgia, where Sarah would, with Chuck's help, assassinate a man, Luka Beridze.

}o{

The water from the shower was warm. Sarah stood under it, her arms hanging at her sides. She wanted to get out of the shower and go and kiss Chuck, kiss him until all the uncertainty and worry and sadness were gone. She wanted to call for him to join her in the shower. It was too small for them to do much of anything in it, but he could hold her in the warm water, his naked body against hers. She craved intimacy, emotional and physical, with him so much she was ready to scream or to claw down the tile wall of the shower. But how could she invite or initiate any kind of intimacy with Chuck, even a kiss, when tomorrow he would watch her pull the trigger and see what she was capable of, and so see what she _was_. A killer. That would make him regret the intimacy—and if she saw that on his face, she'd turn the damn gun on herself.

She knew he didn't want her to go through with it. But what choice did she have? What choice did they have? A couple of times he'd tried to talk to her about alternative plans but she had, cruelly, cut him off each time. The mission objective was the mission objective. It was fixed. _Orders_. They could talk about how to achieve the objective, but talking about the objective itself was off the table. They had Graham's orders.

}o{

"You know, Agent Walker," Graham had said as they both stood, their meeting about to end, "Carmichael never had a Red Test."

At first, Sarah was too confused to feel one way or another about the news. "How is that possible?" Her tone was as blank as she knew her look must be.

"An order came down from the oversight committee. Carmichael was not to be required to go through a Red Test. I tried to find out how that order was given and by whom, but I was unable to do so. It is not…unheard of. Sometimes candidates with…particular…psych evals are not required to go through with a Red Test. But that is an in-house matter and those candidates usually become limited field agents, if they do at all, specialists in some narrow area for which a Red Test seems unnecessary." _Cleaners_.

"I thought something like that what was happening with Carmichael, that he would just be a tech guy, for instance, an analyst at large, for lack of a better title. But that is not what happened. He was made a full-blown field agent over my objections. I just want you to know you are heading out…on a mission of your sort…with a partner who is… _a virgin_. Unbloodied." There was a smirk in Graham's eyes that he carefully kept off his lips. But he was making sure she understood the cost of surprising him. Graham's parting shot. It worked. It unnerved her.

}o{

She finished her shower and got out, toweling herself off. She had been mistreating Chuck since her meeting with Graham, days before they had boarded the plane.

She had talked to him on the phone a few of times while they were both in DC, after her meeting with Graham, but she kept the calls short and found excuses to keep from meeting Chuck in person. He had been severely disappointed, but he had tried to keep it from her. She knew he was still struggling with how to think about the deception he had practiced on her in Burbank—and that he was willing to follow her lead and unwilling to push her.

But it wasn't so much what had happened in Burbank—that was a problem, sure, but one she thought he and she could work through, in time—but it was the new mission and Graham's obvious intention for future missions. She'd been mistreating Chuck out of fear, forcing him away from her in fear that he would reject her once the mission had been completed. She was so afraid of him rejecting her that she was rejecting him. _Stupid trade._ Subject or object, the verb remained the same: 'rejected'. The result would be the same. She would be alone—again.

She grabbed the clean clothes she had taken into the bathroom with her and put them on. She stepped into their room, combing out her damp hair. Chuck looked at her the way he had looked at her since she walked the Nerd Herd desk that first day. That look had been a constant. It had not changed, not even when they had told her what was really going on. She loved that look. It had a unique power to transform her, to change the way she felt about herself. But tonight, with the rifle to be used tomorrow slid under the bed, the change in the way she felt about herself was painful. Would she see that look again or would she assassinate it along with Beridze?

"Are you ready to go to dinner?" She tried to speak kindly. God, she had threatened to shoot him a little while ago. _What the hell was wrong with her_? She hadn't meant it of course, but she couldn't come clean and make clear that it was a joke.

Chuck nodded. She grabbed her purse and put it on her shoulder. She had strapped her knives to her calf while still in the bathroom and she knew her pistol was in her purse. Chuck glumly reached for the tranq gun he insisted on carrying and put it in his shoulder holster. When she groused after they arrived that it was not a real gun, he said that it was: "It's a real tranq gun. It shoots real tranq darts. It's not a fake tranq gun." He was completely impossible, and somehow perfect. And she could have him, and she couldn't.

He slipped on a dark leather jacket. He looked great—but she couldn't let him see the appreciation in her eyes. And she couldn't allow the heat that she felt rising from her core to increase. She turned grabbed her coat and went out the door, leaving him to catch up. Again.

Outside the small hotel, they walked along a narrow, cobblestone street. They found a café they had not yet visited, went inside and sat down. Sarah could speak the language well enough to get by, so she ordered for them. Just as the waiter started to leave, Sarah asked him for a bottle of wine. She knew it was a bad idea but they had been living ascetically since arriving, and, if everything went to plan, this would be the final meal of this sort they would eat in the country. Tomorrow would be spent in the room until it was time. Then, if…she succeeded (was that the right word?)…they'd be on a plane and headed back to the States within an hour.

"Wine? We're going to have wine?" Chuck's tone was ever-so-slightly hostile. "Why tonight, Sarah? Are we…celebrating?" He wouldn't hold her eyes to wait for her answer. He just glared at the blue-checked tablecloth.

The question made her stomach seize. She'd only thought about the bad consequences drinking the wine might have. She hadn't considered the symbolism it might seem to bear. She wasn't celebrating; he knew that. But she had hurt him over and over the last couple of days, the last couple of weeks—maybe she owed him this one. It hurt her. She had only hoped to find a way to relax a little around him, to retrieve the feelings she had for him but wouldn't, couldn't allow herself to feel. She wouldn't have let anything happen between them tonight; tomorrow was still tomorrow, a date with blood. But she wanted a few minutes with Chuck without that damn Damoclean sniper's rifle hanging over them.

She tried to control her tone. "No, Chuck, of course, we aren't celebrating. I just thought it would be nice to…relax a little bit. Everything is…ready. Nothing happens until tomorrow afternoon. It won't hurt to have a little wine. We might both feel better."

Chuck kept glaring at the blue checks. After a few minutes of silence, he lifted his head and met her gaze. "Explain this to me again, Sarah. Why do we have to kill this man? Why are you planning to shoot him from that dingy little room? And if you say because Graham ordered it, I will get up and go back to the hotel."

Sarah took a deep breath and rested her hands flat on the table. "Luka Beridze is an arms dealer and a money launderer. He supplies terrorists with weapons and keeps them in money. His network is in his head, not in a computer, not on paper. If he is gone, it will take the terrorist groups he serves months, maybe even years, to recover. They will be vulnerable in a way that they haven't been in a long time. He is also a monster—there is good reason to believe he murdered his young wife and daughter last year. He beat them both to death when he came home drunk one night."

"Look, Sarah, I get it. He's a bad guy. He needs to be stopped. It's not that I don't want that. I just want another way to do it."

"Can you come up with one, Chuck?"

Chuck twisted his lips to the side in thought. "You say that Beridze keeps his organization in his head. And the source of _that_ intel is… _who_? If I remember right, it was Beridze himself who made that claim, wasn't it? The analysts have accepted it because they've found no evidence to disconfirm it." Chuck was beginning to warm to an idea. "But isn't it convenient? Look, I have an eidetic memory." He paused but she said nothing. "No bragging, but I can do what Beridze claims he can do. There's nothing about Beridze that makes me think he can do what I can do. People who can do what I do, and there aren't many of us, reveal themselves in various ways, unless they are trying to hide what they can do…Anyway, Beridze isn't trying to hide what he can do, he is boasting about it, but nothing in his habits suggests that he can really do what he boasts he can."

Sarah was listening, but she had gotten snagged on Chuck's claim about his memory. She had wondered how he simulated being the Intersect. Now she had an inkling of how he had done it. Because he was a sort of natural Intersect. But she also realized that his memory likely meant that he knew every detail of every mission of hers Graham might have shown him records of. He might even know it all, every mission. She felt lightheaded. She crossed her arms, hugging herself. She'd never imagined he might know so much about her. She thought he'd flashed on a couple of things but no more. But if he knew more—if knew it all—why was he reacting to this mission so badly? Was it just the difference between seeing it on paper and seeing it in person?

Why hadn't she talked to him in DC?

"…I am willing to bet that Beridze is lying. I bet his network is on stored on his computer. If we had the network, we could dismantle the body piece by piece, not just…behead it…as it were. We could take the body of the thing apart. Has anyone checked Beridze's home computer?"

Sarah put aside the thoughts about how much Chuck might know about her and caught up with him. "No, no one has even tried to get inside. He keeps it in his house. The analysts treated Beridze's boast as true and calculated the easiest way to do the most damage was to kill him. Graham agreed. Why are you so sure Beridze's lying, Chuck?"

"When you sent me out to tail him the first day, he was trying to find a particular house. He seemed to get lost. Then he pulled a piece of paper out of his wallet and went on his way."

Sarah blinked, waiting for more. Chuck was silent, looking at her, expecting a reaction. "So?"

Chuck pressed his lips together, exasperated. "Sarah, do you know how long it's been seen I wrote anything down? Other than to amuse myself or to pretend that I don't have the memory I have? If this guy can do what he claims, he doesn't need visual aids. No, I think this is not only a lie, a boast, but a clever boast, since it means that he doesn't have to go all-out with security. No one thinks there's any information in the house to take. It also makes him seem like someone the terrorist groups who use him need to keep safe. It makes him…irreplaceable."

"Like you." Sarah hadn't meant to say that except as a question; maybe she hadn't meant to say it at all. But it had slipped out and there it was now, on the table. The waiter came with the bottle of wine and their salads and put them on the table too. Sarah was glad of the interruption. The waiter poured them each a glass of wine. Sarah, her gaze down, started eating her salad.

She could feel Chuck looking at her and she could feel the interrogative pressure of his gaze. She refused to meet it. She went on eating.

Chuck took a bite. She felt his gaze finally shift.

"Anyway," he started again, his voice soft, "if we could get me into Beridze's house, and onto his computer, I think I could take care of him. Bytes, not bullets, Sarah."

It was Sarah's turn to sigh. "But, even if we could do that, even if you could do that, what would we tell Graham? I've been willing to go off script to save innocent lives, Chuck, but going off script to save Beridze? Graham would lose his mind. There's no telling what he would do." _Yes, there is. He would take you from me before I have found a way to have you, Chuck._ "I just don't see it working."

"Listen, Sarah. We know where Beridze lives. The guy who runs our hotel is on the CIA payroll. If he is willing to let us use his hotel, I am willing to bet he would let us borrow his car—or 'rent' it to us. It would only take us a few minutes to get there. I think we can be in and out in no time."

"Chuck, I never said I didn't think we could do it, that you could do it, I just don't think Graham will…accept it. He won't let us change mission objectives on the fly."

"But what if the result was just as good—better, even? Why would he complain? Ask for forgiveness, not permission."

 _Because he wants you to watch me kill a man in cold blood, Chuck. Graham has two mission objectives._

Even in the low light of the candles in the café, Sarah could see the deep earnestness in Chuck's eyes. It was no wonder he fooled her in Burbank. If he had been someone like Bryce, she'd have caught on. Like would have recognized like. But Chuck seemed a spy in name only, a _sui generis_ spy, working out what he was as he went along instead of stepping into an assigned role. It was, if she could forget the mess they were in, exhilarating. It sent a thrill along her pulse. Maybe it was possible to be a spy without having to force your heart to stop beating, to be a spy with a pulse, warm to the touch, not cold?

She made herself look away, scan the perimeter. If she looked into his eyes for long…well, the wine was already warming her. His eyes would set her ablaze, make her a conflagration. If that happened, she would burn their bones down in that tiny hotel room; their bones would still be smoldering in the morning. Her breathing was rapid and shallow. Okay, the wine was such a bad idea.

Really, these feelings for him were such a bad idea.

Really, this partnership with him was such a bad idea.

She would rather die than lose either. Really.

She finally glanced at Chuck. He'd finished his salad and was staring into the air. Planning.

"Chuck…if we do this, even if we succeed…Graham will likely end our partnership."

Chuck refocused on her. "Sarah, forgive me, but what partnership?" The disappointment in his voice was not just audible, it was almost tactile. "You know this is not what I wanted. I didn't think it was what you wanted. It has the form of what I wanted—I am seated with you, in a Georgian café, in a beautiful city on the coast of the Black Sea. You look even more lovely than ever. We are sharing a bottle of wine. And then we are going to go back to our room and—kill a man. Yeah, this partnership had the form of what I wanted, but the content sucks."

Sarah had no response to that. They finished their meal and they walked back toward the hotel. Chuck explained his plan and Sarah agreed to it. It turned out he had already done some of the groundwork. They would attempt to get into Beridze's house in a few hours, after everyone was asleep. They got the hotel owner to let them borrow his car.

Once back in the room, they both stretched out on the bed, miles in the inches between them.

From the Orthodox church, _basso profondo_ chanting began again. Again, Sarah recognized the words. "Anathema, anathema". Everything seemed against her, against them.

* * *

 **A/N2** Next time, more of The Anathema Mission. And more of the past in Burbank.


	4. Chapter 4: Axis and Allies

**Turned Tables**

 _The Anathema Mission_

* * *

Saturday, January 5, 2008  
Batumi, Georgia  
12:10 am

* * *

CHAPTER 4 Axis and Allies

* * *

Chuck listened to the chanting, staring moodily at the ceiling. He didn't have to ask Sarah about the chant this time. He recognized the repeated—and transliterated—Greek word: "Anathema". _Hell_.

He had set an alarm on his phone in case they fell asleep. He tried to relax.

He couldn't believe she had agreed to break into Beridze's house. He feared she would change her mind. She was wavering, he knew. He recognized in Burbank how deeply she had internalized obedience to CIA orders, to rules. She clung to them as if they gave her life its shape. And, he had to grant, they did—or they had until Burbank, when she began to find them less necessary. Most people who stepped into a structure of rules like the CIA's—Chuck, for example—knew who they were before they stepped in. They had a sure sense of themselves apart from those rules. But Sarah had been sucked in as a girl, really, a girl with no sure sense of herself, no stability in her life, no stable identity. The CIA's rules gave her an identity, became integrated into who she was. Out of that tangle she had built a self. It was no wonder she was knotted up, a snarl of twine.

He snuck a glance at her out of the corner of his eye. She made his chest hurt when he looked at her; she had from the beginning, even in the photograph. He could not remember ever seeing a woman who had that sort of effect on him. Every. Single. Time.

}o{

Chuck and Morgan (Chuck was trying to stop even _thinking_ of him as Martin) were standing in the Buy More, awaiting Sarah Walker's arrival. Graham had alerted them that she was coming. Chuck was almost certain this was not going to work. Walker would see through him in the first few seconds. His hands were trembling, his palms sweaty. He would have been nervous about this mission no matter what, but for it to target a woman whose picture made the hair on his neck stand up and his heart buck and plunge… _Well, it just wasn't going to work_.

He and Casey had been briefed that morning.

"Walker is in town. I expect her to make contact today. Remember, she believes what I tell her right now. She knows that there are questions about her because of Larkin's actions—but I will be open with her about that, to make her think that there are merely _questions_ and to keep her focused on them. I will make it clear that _I_ am not the one concerned about the questions. She will not think I am suspicious of her—if I were, I would not have given her this assignment. Her belief in what I say and her belief that she is the object of mild suspicion from other quarters should help to keep her from doubting all of this, even if she is a double-agent. If she is, she'll be concerned to put the questions to rest. If not, she'll still be concerned to put the questions to rest, but for different reasons.

"She'll want to prove herself free of Larkin's taint, and this project will give her that chance. Remember, as con artists like to say, the bigger the lie, the easier it is to believe. We are about to tell, to enact, a massive lie. But remember, no one is easier to con than a con. I'm banking on that."

Chuck knew that his immediate task was to get Walker to trust him, to believe him—just believe _him_. The Intersect stuff would come later. Chuck was not only nervous, he was exhausted—that was adding to his sense of doom. The CIA and NSA had gathered their respective intel on Fulcrum and anything that might be related, and on possible threats in the greater LA area, and had sent it all to him. That was a big deal. Normally, the two agencies worked harder to keep each other in the dark than they did foreign powers. Chuck had started sifting through it all on the plane and had continued to do it in between the set-up work and briefings with Casey. He had almost gotten through it all. He had told Graham his eidetic memory was a curse—that was proving to be true. He had zero taste for much of what was now permanently retrievably in his head. He grabbed a couple of aspirin and took them, washing them down with cold coffee.

Looking around, Chuck was struck by déjà vu. He had worked college summers at a big box electronics store. In many ways, this seemed less like an assignment and more like a mildly depressing homecoming. He would need to keep that feeling close to pull this off, to make Walker believe he was trapped here, dead-ended.

}o{

He was standing at the Nerd Herd desk, talking on the phone with a real customer. If this was going to work, he needed to be a Buy More employee for real. Or at least for as close to real as possible. That meant giving real help to real customers. As he took down the customer's name and number, he heard Morgan beside him mention Vicki Vale—a mutual favorite. Chuck picked up on the reference without trying to understand why Morgan made it, and Chuck started into the Prince's "Batdance". Morgan didn't join in.

After a couple of seconds, Chuck looked up. The phone call, the déjà vu created by the scene—for a moment, he had forgotten that he was a CIA agent. He was just a college guy working a boring but necessary summer job, wasting time, on-clock time with his buddy.

But when he looked up, he was looking at Sarah Walker-in the flesh, the gloriously unbelievable, incomparable flesh. He had expected her to be beautiful, but he had not expected her to incite an out-of-body experience. He dropped the phone. _Drop the phone_. His heart stopped. _Dead man standing_. For those first few seconds during which he was transported by her beauty, he glimpsed a fuller and deeper life that could be his. He would never forget that glimpse.

And then he remembered her file. _Killer_. He was vise-gripped by a bi-directional desire that made him dizzy—a frenzied desire both to kiss her and to flee from her at the same time.

She smiled. All thoughts of her file vanished. All thought vanished.

He had not expected that smile. The photograph he had seen had not been a photograph of her smiling. He looked more closely at her, at her eyes, and he thought of what it would be like to hold a sheet of ice and to peer through it at a flame.

Her eyes seemed cool—he knew she thought she was meeting an asset—but there was a glow deep in them. That glow was far more unexpected than her smile. He could tell that her first reaction to him was as strong as his to her. Neither of them had been prepared for the other, although they had both read files—hers on him largely false (especially the details), his on her large, very large—and true. Each was hoping to fool the other. Each now felt slightly foolish.

She talked to him about her phone and he took it from her to fix it. She had obviously disabled it herself but he gave her credit—it was a simple but effective ploy: the loosened screw really was a problem on the Intellicell phones. He fixed it and gave it back to her. He expected the full-court press at that point; the Seduction Manual at the Farm dictated that.

 _Keep the seduction moving forward, escalate quickly, if possible. Make the mark feel like he/she is sweeping you off your feet. Don't allow time for questions or second thoughts until you establish the mark under your control._

But she never started the press. The Manual stayed shut. She continued to smile at him, and the glow in her eyes became more pronounced. It was not something she was in control of, he could tell. The glow was linked to a blush—and you couldn't fake a blush. Chuck felt his color rise in response.

At just that moment, a customer, another real customer, came to the desk. The guy had botched his attempt to film his daughter's ballet recital, and the daughter was standing there, tall for her age, in a pink tutu, but suffused in heartbreak. Chuck forgot all about his mission and about Sarah Walker for a moment. He was going to make things right for the dad and his daughter.

}o{

Sarah rolled over on the bed toward him. The room was dark, but he could see light reflected in her eyes.

"What're you thinking about, Chuck?" It was the first time he had heard her voice since Burbank, at least heard it like that, soft and unguarded. Maybe it was because the lights were off. Maybe it was because she agreed to his plan. Maybe it was because she knew he was thinking about her.

"You, Sarah."

"What about me?" Her question had a subtle, flirty melody.

"I was just thinking about the first time I ever saw you." Chuck knew his tone softened to dreamy as he completed that sentence. Lying there in the darkness was affecting him too. Sarah waited for him to go on.

"I was just thinking about how there is always something between us, how we never seem to be able to meet face-to-face. Covers, missions: it's like one or both of us is always rolled up in plastic wrap. We never make contact. I thought that was going to be done with after Bryce was captured, after we…I...explained in Burbank. Once we were partners. But, no. Here we are, wrapped in plastic again. I don't quite understand it, but there's no denying it. That's really what I meant at the café...part of it, at least."

"Chuck, we've not known each other even for a year. And most of that year we spent lying to each other. It's…going to take time." She was quiet, reflecting. "It's like that scene in the Illinois Jones movie you showed me…" Chuck flinched, "Sorry, _Indiana_ Jones movie, where there's a narrow bridge but it is invisible. You remember that scene?" He nodded subtly, but she could feel it if not see it. "Oh, right, you remember…well, you _remember_. Anyway, he steps out onto...nothing…I'm trying to take that step, Chuck. Even if it doesn't seem like it. But that step is taking everything I have."

"But, Sarah, I wasn't lying when I…when I…you know, at the coffee shop…"

Sarah made a soft sound, a soft mix of sigh and sob. It took her a moment to respond. "I know, Chuck. I don't think you were lying. I believe you." Her voice broke a little. "But we are CIA agents, partners, and that means we are both required to take orders, to do the job. I am trying to work out how to believe you, have you as a partner, and do this job."

"Sarah, you know that Chuck Bartowski was not a sheer fiction, don't you? You know how much of me was present in him, in his history, in everything he did, in the way he was with you?"

"Yes, Chuck. I know that being with you seems very much like being with him. But I don't know how to be a spy of the sort I…was…with him, with you. I was different in Burbank." _I was good there_. "Out here, I feel like Burbank was a dream, like an implanted memory, not really part of my life." She was talking as much to herself now as to him, he knew.

" _I am here_ , Sarah. Couldn't it be that…maybe…Burbank…is portable, that it can travel with you?" He tried to keep from pleading. He could tell she was choking back tears, even though she was doing her best to keep silent. Maybe it was wrong to push on all of this right now. She had at least talked about it with him, acknowledged it. That was more than he got from her in Burbank after they left the coffee shop, and more than he got in DC.

"Maybe, Chuck," she finally said, her voice taking up almost no space, even in their tiny room.

}o{

Sarah was hurting Chuck at every juncture. She did not know how to stop.

She had found out things about herself in Burbank that she did not believe at first: that she desperately wanted to love and be loved, that she wanted friends—and that out there, just over the horizon of her hopes, maybe somehow someday there could be a family of her own. Despite Burbank's frustrations and difficulties, it allowed her to dream in those directions. But finding out about what had been really going on—well, it woke her from those dreams.

Almost as bad, it made her wonder about herself.

She had always been able to hold onto one constant, her competence as a spy. _I am a spy, a good one_. That was what was on her placard. She was the daughter of a gifted conman—a lousy father, but a gifted conman—and he had taught her how to keep from being a sucker. She had been so good at the Farm so fast; Graham himself had hand-picked her and groomed her. The spy she had been should never have been taken in by Chuck and Casey, by Beckman and Graham. She should have seen it coming miles away. Instead, she bought it all, believed it all, and started…dreaming.

Dreaming.

She was back in the goddamned nightmare now.

Except Chuck was with her.

She had dragged him into the nightmare.

She was built to survive nightmares. She'd done it for a decade. She'd been built out of the stuff that nightmares are made of. Chuck hadn't. How was this partnership supposed to work?

}o{

At around 2 am, Chuck reached over and gently touched Sarah's hand.

"Sarah, if we're going to break into Beridze's place, we should get ready to go." She nodded without opening her eyes. He knew she had not been asleep. Like him, she had been thinking in the dark.

Chuck turned on the lamp on his bedside table. When he stood and glanced at Sarah, she was already standing, as if she had moved as fast as the light. She glanced at him and her face was the face she wore over the sniper rifle.

"Figure out what you need, Chuck. I am going to go outside and get some fresh air." Her voice was hard and was guarded again. Chuck nodded, trying to hug his despondency to him, so that she would not see it. He started working to open his equipment case, and heard her rummage in her suitcase, and then heard the door click behind her.

Once she was gone, he let his shoulders sink and then he dropped his head in his hands. There had been that moment in the coffee shop, after he had told her what had happened and why, and after he told her he wanted to be her partner, and after he told her he loved her—after all that, there had been a moment, a few, precious, suspended seconds, when he thought it was going to work out, that they would find a way to be together. Somehow, only a few weeks later, they were together in Georgia but they were less together than in Burbank where everything between them had been structured by pretense. The spy gods were screwing with Chuck—maybe this was his punishment for less than whole-hearted service to them.

Maybe he's spent too many hours near that cathedral, in earshot of the chanting. _Anathema._

}o{

Sarah reached into her pocket and grabbed the burner phone she slipped in it before leaving the room. The heavy breeze from the Black Sea was humid and cold. Clutching the top of her jacket closed, she walked until she found a pool of thick darkness under a tree. She stepped into it and dialed a number she had never dialed before, a number she had gotten a few days after she made her partnership with Chuck official.

After one ring, a voice, cool, detached, efficient: "Frost."

"Walker."

"How can I help you, Agent Walker, Sarah?" There were traceries of surprise and concern in the voice now.

"I need to talk to someone about my partner."

"First, is everything, is _everyone_ , ok?"

"Yes, although things are about to start and I don't know how they will go."

Sarah felt strange, not only calling Frost, but admitting that to her. In the past, Sarah just did the job and did her best not to think about it or have any feelings about it one way or another. She worked hour to hour, without hope or fear. She kept going on new missions so that she would not have to think or feel anything about the old. And now her partner—all he did was think and feel and make her think and feel. _I love that. I hate that. I love that._

}o{

Sarah was sitting in her DC apartment, her phone in her hands. She wanted to call Chuck and talk to him but she couldn't summon the nerve. She had talked to him briefly the day before to tell him that she had asked for him as her partner and that Graham had…agreed. But she had kept the conversation focused on that and on the likely timetable for hearing about their first mission. She could tell that there was so much more he wanted to say and to talk about—there was so much more she wanted to say and to talk about—but she couldn't do it. She ended the call once the necessary news had been shared.

She needed to call him and just talk, the way they often had on cover dates in Burbank. She believed those had been, at bottom, real for both. She should just call him, but her resolve kept failing.

She knew that one stumbling-block was her pride—she still could not believe she had been fooled so completely for so long. Admittedly, not everything about Burbank was fake—most of the missions had been real, they had made a good team, the three of them. She'd grown to respect, even like, Casey. Admittedly, the set-up had been complicated and clever. Admittedly, Graham had also gotten lucky: Chuck was everything she wanted and needed but had not known she wanted or needed—and that had been the cornerstone of the deception: her sudden, compelling desire and need for Chuck.

She had been so caught up in him and in her reactions to him that she had let the rest of it just roll by without thinking about it closely. She only had eyes for him from the beginning. She was fully invested in protecting him, fully invested in him. He was foreground; everything else was background.

Still, her pride was wounded. Every conversation with Chuck now was a reminder that the con artist had been artfully conned. But even worse, was that she no longer had CIA rules to keep Chuck at a distance and to manacle her own feelings. Now that she could have him, she had no idea how to do it. She could get over the wounded pride, in time. She could let go of the fakery, the set-up, in time. But she kept waffling on Chuck—not on how she felt but on what it meant for her and for her career as an agent that she felt that way. All this was so different than when she had been partners with Bryce…

There was a sharp knock on the door. Sarah never had visitors. Sometimes the maintenance guy would stop by—to fix some problem and leer at her unnoticed (or so he thought). Sarah reached down into the inside of the arm of her couch and pulled out a small pistol she kept hidden there. She tiptoed toward the door.

"Yes?" She did not open the door.

"Sarah Walker? I am here to talk to Sarah Walker." A woman's voice, a voice used to authority.

"Who are you?" Sarah demanded, her tone Florida flat.

"The mother of your partner." This was spoken in a harsh whisper, but audible. "I'm…Frost."

Sarah cracked the door to find a CIA badge held up to the crack. _Special Agent Mary Gunter_. Sarah knew the codename _Frost_ from conversation with Chuck, but also before, from whispers among older agents when Sarah was new. Frost was the Ice Queen of her day—until she stepped into the shadows and never fully returned. Now, Sarah knew, she was Chuck's mom, and she was still working as an agent, but in a strange role that Sarah did not understand and Chuck had not explained. Frost did not report to Graham, as far as Sarah could tell. It was unclear how anyone could work for the CIA without reporting to Graham.

Sarah stepped back and let Frost in, holding her gun behind her back.

As Frost walked in, she rolled her eyes. "Put the gun away, Sarah…May I call you, Sarah?" It was a question but Frost was not asking a question. The issue was already settled. She sat down on the near end of the couch, putting her purse at her feet. Sarah circled behind the couch to the far end, stuffing her pistol back into its hiding place as she sat back down. She took a quick, sweeping look at Chuck's mom.

Frost was wearing a black pants suit, expensive and beautifully cut. She was in her fifties but looked much younger in general, except around eyes, where a lifetime of deception and suspicion had left its mark. Still, she was a beautiful woman. She was trim and athletic, and carried herself lightly. She crossed her legs and stared frankly at Sarah. Everything about Frost was the product of choice and control, Sarah realized. Nothing was being shared that she did not intend to share. And Sarah suspected that most of the time what Frost intended to share was either false or ultimately unimportant. Sarah couldn't help but gawk a little. It was like meeting one of her possible future selves. The meeting did not excite Sarah about that possible future.

Frost seemed determined to make Sarah speak first. Sarah decided it made no sense to treat Frost as the enemy, so she asked, "Are you here about Chuck?"

"You mean your new partner?" Question for a question: Sarah should've seen that coming.

"Yes, my new partner. Is there a problem?"

Frost shot Sarah a glance that suggested that of course there was a problem—and that Sarah had to know that.

"I have certain privileges in the…US intelligence community, Sarah. That means I can access…items few can access…" Frost waited for Sarah's response.

Sarah tried to decide which way to go. This was the mother of her new…partner, a man she hoped would one day be—in a yet-to-be-specified way— _more_ than her partner. She could simply play the game of giving-nothing, getting-nothing, the game Frost had started, or she could try, to the limits of her undeveloped powers of honesty, to be honest. Maybe if she couldn't be honest with Chuck, she could with his mother. She decided to try honesty, although it made her heart race. _What does it say about a woman if she can lie calmly but cannot be honest without panic_? Sarah wondered if Frost had ever worried about that question. Looking at Frost's eyes, she knew the answer. _Yes, she has. Good. Bad._

"I take it that is your way of saying you have read my file. And now you are worried. Is that right?" Sarah heard the tremor in her own voice, the slight, defensive edge.

"I have seen a _redacted_ version of your file. Only Graham has or can grant access to the full file and, let's just say, he's not my biggest fan."

Sarah nodded, surprised. Frost had just shared more than was necessary. Maybe Frost was going to give up on the giving-nothing, getting-nothing game since Sarah had not engaged in it.

"What can I tell you about the file, or about me? What do you want to know?" Sarah had to squeeze those words out through a constricted throat.

"I really have just two questions for you, Sarah. But you need to answer the second only if you answer the first in a certain way." Frost's delivery was less clipped now. The sound of a mother concerned for her child had crept into Frost's voice. It was disconcerting, given the practiced bodily composure of the woman seated on the other end of the couch. Her posture suggested she had no concerns at all.

Sarah nodded her head once.

"How do you feel about my son, Sarah?" Frost's eyes shone in a sudden challenge, daring Sarah to lie or evade. She leaned toward Sarah.

Sarah's panic mounted. Every instinct screamed for her to lie or to avoid a direct answer. The only thing that saved her was Frost's quick, unexpected follow-up comment. "I promise you, Sarah, that whatever you tell me I will not share with my son. Whatever words you say here, they can only rightly be said to him, said as he wants to hear them, by you. It's not my place to share your words. I am asking for myself, to quiet my own mind. I…admire you…as a spy, Sarah. Do you understand how much that terrifies me…as a mother?"

Sarah fought to answer. She thought about Bryce's visit to Burbank, before she knew he was a traitor, a Fulcrum double-agent. They had been sitting in a car and she had been fighting for words, and he told her that she was not good at saying how she felt. Bryce had been right about that. But he had been wrong about it too.

Bryce had sometimes suggested that she lacked the words to say how she felt, as if her difficulty, whenever he asked her questions fishing for compliments or reassurance, was that she had an impoverished emotional vocabulary. In an airport bookstore, while looking for something to read, he'd once jokingly held up a paperback thesaurus, as if she needed that so that she could finally say how she felt. She had been tempted to have him buy it just so she could memorize the entries for 'patronizing' and for 'ass', and share them with him. Repeatedly.

No, she had words enough—truth be told, far more words that Bryce, the engineer, had at his command. Her problem was not finding the words; her problem was saying them.

What Bryce never got—and it was a reason why she had never loved him, really, although she hadn't been sure of that until she kissed Chuck so desperately just before Bryce reappeared—was that telling someone you love him was itself an act of love. Sarah found the relevant words hard to say because, a woman of action though she was, she was wholly unschooled in how to love someone else, in that kind of action. She'd had almost no examples and no one to assist her.

When she was little, her father and mother had not helped her at all, not in their relationship to each other or in their relationship to her. _Did I ever hear either of them say those words?_ Sarah felt lost among the words, not because she did not know what they meant, but because she did not know how to mean them.

But now she needed to say something about her feelings to Frost. She'd have to figure out how to do that with Chuck at some point, if she could—and that would be far harder. She took a deep breath and she gave Frost her answer.

"I'm…I'm…I'm in love with your son." Stammering. _I don't stammer_. "I've known it…sort of known it, anyway…maybe since our first date. I even told him then that I _liked_ him," Sarah noticed Frost smirk at the milquetoast phrase, but Sarah had to let it pass; Frost was right to smirk. "But I knew that I had fallen for him that first night, I knew it while I watched over him later while he sat on the beach. After we saved the general.

Frost uncrossed her legs, clasping her hands together. "You know that Chuck was genuinely upset on that beach, don't you? I talked to him later that day. He is not supposed to tell me these things, but you know him." Frost and Sarah shared a smile. _Yes_. "He was profoundly unhappy about that part of the assignment after your first date. You were not what he expected at all. He was sure you were loyal, that you had no tie to Fulcrum. But Casey and Graham and Beckman were not satisfied, not for a long while. They thought you were biding your time. They worried that asking him to trust you—which you must admit was out of character for you, Sarah—was you laying a foundation. They were worried that your plan might be to seduce him and take him on the run, take him to Fulcrum. And they were worried from that first date on that Chuck was compromised. They started watching him almost as close as they were watching you. It was incredibly strange. It took a toll on him. Some days he didn't think he would make it."

Sarah listened carefully, sad and happy at the same time. Some of those details were new to her, or at least they changed her angle on things. Chuck had said he was in love with her from the beginning. She had taken that as poetic license. But it was true. It pinked her heart and she felt her cheeks turn pink—nothing she could do about it.

Frost saw it and smiled for the first time. Her shoulders relaxed infinitesimally. Just enough that Sarah noticed.

"Ok, good, Sarah, so here is the second question: Do you love Chuck more than you love Langston Graham?" Frost's smile vanished. The challenge in her eyes returned.

"What? What?" Sarah spluttered, aghast. "Love _Graham_ —you must be joking?"

Frost sat for a minute, her face masked, her glare intense, and then the smile re-grew on her face. "Yes, I'm joking in a way. I don't think anyone loves Langston Graham. I suspect Langston needs a few drinks and a jukebox tune before he can love himself. But take it as a manner of speaking: do you love my son more than you love your job?"

Sarah's tongue twisted. At some level, a question like that had been on her mind since she and Chuck got to DC. She still hadn't sorted it out. Not just the answer, but the right form of the question. It was the ill-formed source of the difficulty between her and Chuck.

"Look, Mary, if I may," Frost gave her a curt drop of the chin, "Mary, I don't know that I _love_ my job. It's more like it is all that I have ever had, all that I have. My childhood…was a disaster. Graham recruited me…young…and I turned out to have gifts. I have been very successful, after a spy's fashion. You might say that the CIA is my family, the only one I have really had. And being a spy is the only thing I know."

Sarah could see sympathy, even identification, in the older woman's reaction. But she could also tell that her answer was the wrong answer—maybe far worse than if she had claimed to love the job.

"So, you don't see yourself giving it up?" Sarah could tell that Frost realized the question reflected on her too, sitting there with her badge still visible, sticking up out of her black purse beside the couch.

"You need to understand two things about my son, Sarah," Frost's face was set; what she was about to say was non-negotiable.

"First, Chuck is special. I am not just talking as his mother. I can…preserve some distance. He has the makings of a remarkable spy, except he wears his heart on his sleeve, even undercover. He is thoroughly decent, fundamentally humble. His sister—you know Eleanor—and I were pleased when he chose the CIA. We cheered and we pushed him. He had been so depressed his final year at Stanford…Anyway, we thought the change would be good. But we thought he intended to become an analyst. His gifts would make him a great one. But we were shocked when we found out he was headed to the Farm. We thought it was a horrible idea: we had agreed it was a horrible idea for Ellie. She works in the field from time to time, but not because of training at the Farm. Someone…recognized that she had certain talents.

"Chuck's reasons for making that choice, at least the ones he has shared with me, make little sense. I believe it had something to do with Bryce Larkin and with his girlfriend—but Chuck never told me or told Ellie that whole story. All we know is that he lost both a friend and his girlfriend during the final semester of his senior year. He finished on autopilot, miserable.

I suspect he also became an agent to prove something—to himself, to me. He believes that I regard him as soft, as naïve, as a dreamer. But that's just him hanging onto things I teased him about when he was a boy. One thoughtless remark about his 'girlish screams'..." Frost stopped to air quote the final phrase and to frown at a memory. "Anyway, I didn't understand him when he was little, and I wasn't around much, and when I was around I wasn't the best at…nurturing. I don't believe those things and didn't when he was little. But he heard my objections to him becoming a field agent as if he were a little boy and I was telling him he shouldn't go to the park with the older boys."

"Chuck may manage yet to be a successful spy. He has excelled in ways I would not have predicted. I hope he doesn't manage it, to be honest. But either way, I don't think he is a spy for long. Since my son told me he told you this, let me just say it. My son loves you. You are his number one priority—not just professionally, not just—if this makes sense—personally. You are his number one priority _existentially_. He loves you. I don't think he knows quite how much. You are already his life. He wants to be your partner—not so the two of you can serve the greater good," Frost's nose wrinkled, "not so you can spend time together in exotic locations, because, well, you know, spies and darkness and side streets, no spy sees the places she goes, not really… He wants to be your partner because he wants to be with you and because he wants to keep you safe. Full stop. You and your safety will always be his primary mission objectives, no matter what Graham says.

"Speaking of what Graham says, do you know your first mission yet? I am not asking for specifics."

"I don't know any. But I do know it'll be…a mission of my sort. Wetwork, fast in, fast out." Sarah was surprised to see Frost flinch. Frost recognized that she had seen it, and noticed Sarah's surprise.

"Yes, Sarah, you are right: I've done my share of…your sort of mission. My reaction is for Chuck. He's been…able to…avoid missions like that. What he did with you in Burbank, but on a much smaller scale, that is his sort of mission. Tech stuff, computers, codes, information, and disinformation. He can do deep cover work, but nothing that would require…well, nothing that would require him to…

"Require him not to be Chuck, right?"

"Right."

"But, Mary, he won't be…pulling the trigger. I will."

"But he will be there, he will be helping you. He will have to watch you do it. That might be worse for him than if he pulled the trigger."

They both fell silent.

Mary got up and reached into her purse.

"Here is a burner phone with my number, Sarah. You can call, if you need to. I know at some level we both wish it weren't true, but it is…We understand each other."

}o{

"You do not know how things are going to go, Sarah? What do you mean?" Frost voice on the phone was puzzled.

"I mean that Chuck's called an audible and I've…agreed. He believes that instead of taking the target out, we can bring down the entire network, not just crippling but maybe even eventually dismantling the terrorist groups the target is linked to. But that is not what Graham ordered. Graham ordered the target dead. That was our mission objective."

Talking to Frost about this, standing on the street in Batumi, was surreal. Sarah shivered, mostly because of the cold, but also because of the strangeness of the situation. Other than Carina, and maybe Ellie, she'd never had a female…friend. _Is Frost my friend?_ She and Frost had made similar compromises over the years. And maybe it helped to talk to someone else who was…committed…to Chuck. _What does it mean to be committed to someone? Why can't I answer that question?_

"Do you think Chuck can do what he says? Do you trust your partner?"

"Yes, Mary, I do."

"Because you have to decide—is he really your partner or do you still believe he is your asset? He never really was your asset, Sarah." Frost stopped cold.

"I know, I know." Sarah's teeth chattered a bit.

"Aren't we back to my question in your apartment, Sarah? Do you love Chuck more than you love Langston Graham?"

"Graham can dissolve our partnership, Mary. He can take Chuck from me."

"Then get results Graham cannot ignore. Or be prepared to walk, Sarah."

 _Chuck means everything to me. But without the job, I am nothing._

A cold mist was now falling and the breeze had picked up. Sarah's shivering intensified. She ended the call.

* * *

 **A/N2** Next time, a visit to the Beridze home. I'm off to Chicago for a few days. So, likely no more of the Anathema Mission until next week.


	5. Chapter 5: A Chink in the Wall

**A/N1** Greetings from Chicago. A little more of our story from Batumi, the Anathema Mission. Thanks so much for the thoughtful reviews and PMs! It is a privilege to have readers who willing to invest in the story word-by-word. You are better than I deserve!

Don't own Chuck. No money made.

* * *

 **Turned Tables**

 _The Anathema Mission_

* * *

Saturday, Januaray 5, 2003  
Batumi, Georgia  
2:52 am

* * *

CHAPTER 5 A Chink in the Wall

* * *

Sarah scaled the wall that ran around the back of Beridze's estate. As always, Chuck marveled at her dexterity. She scaled the wall so effortlessly that it was as if she levitated over it. Chuck started to drift into further ruminations about her dexterity when he heard her fierce whisper from the other side of the wall.

"Chuck. C'mon!" Chuck squeezed his eyes shut, dispelling the thoughts, and began to climb. He got up and over, quickly, but no one would have thought he levitated. Still, he did it without hurting himself or landing on Sarah—even without making noise. He heard her softly huff her approval. Chuck laughed under his breath. Sarah turned on him, her eyes getting big.

"Chuck, be quiet." Another fierce whisper.

"I can't help it," he whispered back gently. "I remembered that scene in Shakespeare, in _A Midsummer Night's Dream_ , when Snout pretends to be the wall between the lovers…" Sarah's eyes grew even bigger. "Not that I am saying we are _lovers,_ because, you know, well, of course, you'd know, we're not. I mean maybe one half of us is a lover…"

"Chuck, can we keep the literary reference and the personal chat for another time? We are working with a hasty plan here and without any safety net. Please focus." Sarah's eyes had softened though, and she grabbed his hand and squeezed it. They stole carefully through the icy, subtropical garden, patched with snow.

' _Til_ Heaven _freezes over_. _Did anyone ever say that? I mean, I get it, it's not fiery, so the freezing over would be less amazing, but…_ Chuck was musing on the question and almost ran over Sarah. She had stopped and was regarding him with the barest hint of a smile. He stopped just short of contact with her.

"Say, Chuck, wasn't there a hole in that wall, the wall in Shakespeare?" She whispered the question softly and turned, leading him by the hand deeper into the garden. They were heading toward the back entrance they had targeted, a service entrance.

Chuck ran through lines of the Shakespeare in his head, then found the passage. He whispered the lines to her.

And such a wall, as I would have you think,  
That had in it a crannied hole or chink,  
Through which the _lovers_ …

When he whispered the last word, Sarah turned and looked at him flatly, but the flatness of the look was, he knew, significant. For a minute, he couldn't breathe. If all she wanted to do was to shut him up, it certainly worked; but he was almost certain that was not all she wanted to do. He felt warm all over, better than he had since they'd gotten to Batumi. Better than he had since Burbank.

Sarah paused and motioned for Chuck to crouch down behind her. She had pulled out her gun and she was scanning the area. Chuck took advantage of the moment to unsling his backpack from his shoulders and to get his tools ready. Sarah turned and nodded. He crossed the section of the wide driveway that separated the garden from the house. The service entrance was at an angle from the main rear doors, and not fully visible from inside the house. A design flaw, but a lucky one for them.

Chuck got to work immediately, neatly prying off the face of the keypad used to unlock the entrance. He attached his code generator, an electronic skeleton key, to the wiring and turned it on. He did not know how long it would take. He watched the numbers flash on the screen, far too quickly to keep up with. He looked over his shoulder. Sarah nodded. Everything was still going ok. He glanced back at the screen to see numbers still tumbling over. He glanced back at Sarah. He had expected her to be scanning the area, but instead, she was staring at him. He realized the generator was blinking and he heard the door unlock. He unhooked the generator and replaced the face of the keypad. He motioned for Sarah. She crossed the driveway with her gun extended in both hands, crouched down, her vision focused on the main rear doors. Chuck stowed the generator. Then Sarah was beside him. He pulled the door far enough open for her to slip inside and he followed her.

}o{

Sarah trying to figure out where that Shakespeare maneuver had come from. She knew Chuck had a head full of, well, everything, but it had been years since she'd seen the play—in fact, she hadn't seen it all, only that one scene when she had been undercover as an aspiring actress. She hadn't been in the scene, but her mark had played Snout, so she'd stayed around to watch. She really didn't remember the exact line, she just remembered that there had been two lovers. Leave it to Chuck to know the actual lines.

She had just tried for the first time to make something clear to him. To get him to see that he was not in this partnership thing alone. And that it was not—absolutely, positively not—him against Graham and her. Maybe she could not say the word she would like to say to him, and for all sorts of reasons, a few good, most bad. But she could let Chuck (or Shakespeare) say the word for her.

But as she watched Chuck open the service door to Beridze's massive home, it hit her. If Chuck was not alone in this partnership thing, neither was she. She had a partner, a man who put her and her safety and her…wholeness above his own. She watched him work on the door, his movements sure and precise, and she felt herself flush, flooded with sudden heat. In the middle of a mission, he moved her. _Damn it_. _I'm always telling him to focus_.

She watched his dexterous fingers, long and precise, as he finished with the door, and she could think about nothing but those dexterous fingers…And then she realized he had seen her staring, and that he had gotten the door open. She scanned the area again and ran across the driveway to him.

}o{

Once inside, Sarah yielded the lead to Chuck. He'd hacked into the floor plan in the city computer records. Beridze's study was in the middle of the house, a small room with no windows. It was the place to start. Chuck was moving in that direction when he stopped. There'd been a sound—a kind of muffled moan, off in a different direction.

Chuck looked at her and Sarah motioned silently for him to go on, but only after gesturing at his ear, a reminder to her that they had earwigs. He turned his on and she did the same. She would check on the noise. Chuck went on. It was all Sarah could do to go in the other direction; she wanted to stay with him. She watched him for a second until the darkness in the house obscured him from view.

She crept in the direction of the noise. She hadn't heard it repeated but she knew the direction to travel. She was sure she hadn't made a mistake when she realized the sound had come from the wine cellar. There was a short flight of stairs going down. At the top of the stairs was a small chair pinned to the floor by the massive frame of Beridze's bodyguard. The bodyguard was nearly asleep, his giant head lolling about as he fought to keep from nodding but lost. Sarah held her position, behind a counter, until he had been out for a minute or two, then she got the tranq gun, the extra one she snuck from Chuck's bag, and she hit him with a dart. She waited another minute or two until the body guard's shoulders slumped as far as they could while he remained in the chair.

Sarah tiptoed past the guard, making sure he was out, and then she went down the stairs. She turned the lock on the heavy wooden door and stepped inside. She heard movements and another moan. She pushed the door almost closed, then grabbed the thin flashlight on her belt. She turned it on to find two young women gagged and bound, lying awkwardly on the cold stone floor. They had obviously been able to see her when she came in, their eyes fully adjusted to the darkness. She could see the fear and hope in their gaze. She bent down beside the nearest one motioning for her to be quiet. Sarah made eye contact with the other. Both nodded in understanding. Sarah retrieved one of her knives. A few seconds later, the women were no longer bound.

Both women were in fancy, revealing dresses, incredibly short and with such deep necklines that there was not a lot of material between. She knew that they were both professionals, escorts. She reiterated her command to be quiet and then gently removed the gags from each. She gestured for them to stand. Each did so. _Good, both mobile._ She motioned for them to take off their heels and leave them. While they took them off, Sarah, her own eyes now adjusted to the dark of the cellar, could see that each was covered in nasty welts and bruises. One was blond, the other a redhead. The blond had a severely blackened eye, the redhead a deep cut on one of her lips and a trail of dried blood running down to her chin. Sarah began to burn with anger.

Keeping the tranq gun ready, she turned, beckoning them to be quiet and to follow, and the little brigade marched carefully past the bodyguard, back to the spot at which Chuck and Sarah parted company. Chuck was not there. _Damn, damn_. Sarah had hoped that he would be. It was going to take time to get the two women out, and, assuming they all made it, they would then have to figure out what to do with them.

"Chuck," Sarah whispered, "I'm back at the door with…two prisoners…I found. Where are you?" She held her breath, waiting for a response and hearing the pounding of her heart. The bodyguard would not be a problem, but it was unclear if Beridze had anyone else protecting the house. No one else seemed to be _. Talk to me, Chuck. Please, please—talk to me_.

It had occurred to Sarah that the mission should have been to target Beridze in his house. Why had Graham wanted him gunned down in the square? It would have been far easier to kill him in his bed. It would be far easier. She could likely get to Beridze's room right now, undetected, and end him. One headshot. She had a silencer with her. If Chuck got the information on the network, that would be a bonus—but they would have secured Graham's objective, give or take a little—plus they'd have the information on the network. Graham would accept it. Not what he wanted but still more than he wanted. A part of Sarah, a strengthening part, was pushing her to go and terminate Beridze. _Orders_. She exchanged the tranq gun for her regular pistol, taking it off safety. The two women, watching her, began to panic.

 _Orders_.

"Sarah, it's me." When Sarah heard his voice, the part of her pushing to go and finish Beridze weakened. Then disappeared.

 _Chuck._

"Chuck, how much longer?" She hardly recognized her voice, soft and deeply relieved despite her whispering.

"Not long now, Sarah, maybe a minute or two. Be with you…all…in a jiffy." A jiffy? Chuck didn't talk like a spy even in while spying. Sarah checked her watch, snickering internally.

Sarah turned to the two women. She asked quietly in Georgian if they were ok. When they indicated they were, she explained quickly that she had a partner in the house and that he would join them in a minute. Sarah looked at the glowing hands on her watch. Thirty seconds since Chuck had told her a minute or two. The two women were trying to hold it together, but Sarah could see that their panic was intensifying. She'd made it worse. Her face must have changed for a moment while she thought about her orders. She wasn't sure they would hold it together until Chuck got to them. The redhead's cut lip was trembling and tears were welling in her eyes. A small whimper escaped from her. _Shit_.

Just then, Chuck appeared, grinning. He seemed pleased. He winked at Sarah and walked up to the two women. He glanced at them, then put his hands out carefully, gently, one on a shoulder of each woman. He smiled at them, that smile of his that defied categorization, mischievous and merry, self-mocking and cheeky, all at once. She saw the two women calm down almost immediately. They even smiled back—to the extent their injuries allowed.

Chuck looked back at her and gave her the version of that smile that he saved for her, the one that had cheered her so often in Burbank, and, truth be told, made it hard for her to sleep so often in Burbank. She smiled back, a schoolgirl's smile, she knew, not the smile of Graham's enforcer on a mission.

He led the group out the door. Sarah took up the rear, walking backward until they were all outside. Just as they made it across the driveway and into the garden, they heard a car coming slowly around the house, heard its powerful motor purring. They quickly ran to the wall.

Sarah went up and over first. Chuck helped the redhead and then the blonde. Afterward, he slipped over. They half-jogged up the street and into an alley where they had parked the hotel owner's Opel Vectra. Chuck popped open the trunk and threw his gear inside. Sarah got the two women in the backseat, assuring them that they were almost to safety. Chuck touched her shoulder. From where they were standing, she could tell that the garden lights at Beridze's had been turned on. The bodyguard had been found, presumably. They could hear doors slam and the powerful motor of the car roar to life and surge into gear. Chuck grabbed Sarah's backpack from her shoulders and she unhooked her belt. He threw the backpack into the truck with his and slammed it. She kept the belt with her she ran to the passenger side of the car. Chuck ran to the driver's side and for a second he looked at her, puzzled.

"Chuck, you drive; I will shoot—if necessary.".

He shrugged and then jumped in. She jumped in too and Chuck started the car, heading down the alley away from Beridze's house. Chuck left the lights off, but Sarah could tell that he could see well enough where he was going. She turned and looked out the rear window. So far, no tailing car. She then glanced at the two women, taking a cue from Chuck and smiling at them. Although they were afraid, they both relaxed.

"What're your names?" She asked in their language.

The redhead answered in English. "I am Keto. She is Eka."

"Oh, you speak English?"

"A little. Enough for my…job. Many English-speakers look to be…uh…escorted." Sarah nodded and sat back down. Chuck looked over at her. He realized what Keto meant. They'd traveled a few blocks. Still no sign of pursuit. A few minutes more and Sarah began to relax a little.

She turned back around and spoke to Keto. "Is there somewhere we can take you? Someplace safe, where you can get help for your injuries?"

Keto turned to Eka and they began to talk quickly in Georgian. Sarah could not quite keep up, but she knew they were debating where to go. Evidently, Beridze had great reach in Batumi. None of the women's normal places was likely to be safe. They seemed to have no suggestion about where they could go. They were both still panicky and so neither was thinking clearly. Sarah had Chuck pull into the corner of a gas station lot. She got out and went inside. She came out with a bag a few minutes later and got back in the car. Chuck started driving again.

Sarah told Chuck to find a place to stop, a place off the road but with some light. Eventually, he found a parking lot large for them to park away from the street and with a few lights. Chuck stopped the car. Sarah asked Keto and Eka to get out. The night was getting quite cold and neither woman had much on. They had run through the garden and up the street barefoot. Sarah had seen a blanket in the trunk and she told Chuck to grab it. While he did that, Sarah grabbed a bottle of water from the bag of items she bought at the gas station. She had grabbed a bunch of paper towels from the bathroom, and she wet a couple of them down and wiped Keto's face, carefully sponging the blood from her chin. She then grabbed a bottle of painkillers from the bag, opened it, and gave Keto a couple and the rest of the bottle of water. Keto took the pills and drank thirstily from the water bottle. Chuck put the blanket around Keto's shoulders.

Sarah then ministered to Eka, paying close attention to her swollen eye. Sarah assured herself that Eka's eye was undamaged, then she wiped Eka's face with another couple of dampened paper towels. She gave Eka a couple of pills and the rest of the water bottle she had used to dampen the paper towels. Like Keto, Eka drank thirstily.

Sarah got them both back into the car and Chuck made sure the blanket covered them both. He closed the door and walked around the car to where Sarah stood on the other side.

"What are we going to do with them?" Chuck looked at her. He had watched everything that happened closely.

Sarah twisted her mouth to the side. "I figure about the only thing we can do is to find them a hotel room somewhere out of the way and put them up for a few days. Maybe, when they've had some time to rest and calm down, they will be able to think of someone who could help them."

"Ok. Do you have enough currency? Chuck reached into his pocket and pulled out a tight roll of _lari_. I have enough for a night plus a little extra." Sarah produced a similar roll.

"So, we have enough. We should get going. We are still too close to Beridze's for me to be comfortable." Chuck glanced back at the road as if illustrating his claim _._

"I'll drive now," Sarah said, grinning at him. "Say, did you-know-what work out?" Chuck reached into his other pocket and showed Sarah a flash drive. She forgot herself and leaned into him, giving him a quick, full kiss on the lips. Sarah pulled back, stunned at herself. She had not done that deliberately, not done it on purpose. It just happened. Chuck's face was stretched in shock. That had not been a cover kiss. That had not been an "it's not just a cover kiss". That had been _a kiss_. Sarah spontaneously kissing Chuck.

Sarah blanked her features, her habitual response to any unexpected saturation by her own desires, her own feelings. "Let's go."

Chuck's face reshaped itself—into a small, disappointed frown, and then the frown was gone. "Ok."

}o{

It took about twenty-five minutes to find a hotel of the sort they were wanted—off the beaten path and distant from Beridze's. Sarah had explained what they were doing to Keto and Eka. Once Chuck parked, Sarah went in the office. The women remained huddled together under the blanket. Chuck talked a bit with Keto, but she seemed too exhausted to struggle much with English. Sarah came back with a room key. She and Chuck walked the women to the room, promising to check on them tomorrow, and securing a promise from the women to stay put for at least a couple of days and to stay off the hotel phone. Sarah left them enough _lari_ to pay for meals.

Sarah started talking with them in Georgian again. Chuck did not know what they were saying, beyond being able to make out that it was about Beridze. Likely Sarah was trying to find out exactly what had happened.

As they returned to the car, Chuck turned to Sarah. "Do you think they will do it? Stay here, stay off the phone?" He handed Sarah the car keys.

"I don't know. I hope so. I'm pretty sure that Eka has a…habit. It won't be easy for her, not after she calms down and the time starts to weigh on her hands. Let's hope they last until tomorrow and that they think of somewhere to go. We have to leave tomorrow." With that, she started the car and they drove back to the hotel in silence.

}o{

When they got back to their room, Sarah grabbed her things and headed into the shower. She hadn't said anything to Chuck on the way back to the hotel. Chuck sat down on the bed. Just as Sarah was closing the door to the bathroom, Chuck said her name.

"Sarah, you were great with them. Kind." His voice was thick.

She left opened the door a bit more and gazed at him. "You were kind first, Chuck, you and that…smile of yours."

On cue, he flashed her private version of that smile at her again. Her knees weakened. His look was so purely adoring it overwhelmed her, frightened her a little. "No, Sarah you found them and freed them. Kind."

Sarah blushed and dropped her head. She was wringing her hands. "Chuck, after I found the women, I realized I could slip into Beridze's room and…complete the mission. I had my gun out, had it in my hand, the safety off." Why was she telling him this? She could not stop herself. She continued to wring her hands. "I was going to do it…" She had dropped her head again. She looked back up. She could see the confusion on his face.

"Why didn't you? Was it the women?" Chuck was trying to understand. His voice was stretched thin.

She fought to control herself. "I didn't…because I heard your voice on the comm."

She wasn't sure how to inflect what she said because she was trying to tell him several different things at once.

She wanted Chuck to know how close she had come to doing what Graham wanted her to do. She wanted Chuck to know how close she had come to undoing what he was trying to do for her, for them.

She wanted Chuck to know the power of his voice.

She wanted Chuck to know that maybe Burbank _was_ portable.

He gazed at her, his eyes soft, full. She met his gaze for a second, then gently closed the bathroom door.

}o{

While Sarah was in the shower, Chuck grabbed his laptop and checked the information he downloaded at Beridze's.

It was what he had hoped it would be-and then some. Beridze's safeguards and passwords and protections had been a joke—for Chuck; he had blown by them at warp speed. He now had Beridze's network—all his contacts, his arms suppliers, the people he supplied, the movements made to launder money, all of it. There was unexpected information too, surprising information, some showing how deeply entrenched in Batumi's gambling industry Beridze was. Chuck stared intently at each screen of information. Then his hands flew across the keyboard and he yanked the flash drive out of the laptop.

Sarah came out of the shower wearing a t-shirt and shorts. She was folding her clothes and putting them on the top of the small dresser.

"Sarah, what happened to Eka and Keto?"

"Beridze. He put in an…order for them…both. But when they showed up, he was drunk. Things got ugly fast. He started hitting them. They were afraid for their lives. If he hadn't passed out…The bodyguard gathered them up and locked them in the wine cellar, where I found them. He was waiting for his boss to come to and decide what to do with them. They were sure they'd never leave his Beridze's place alive. I figure they were right."

Chuck felt himself go pale. He smiled after a moment, a grim smile of a sort that he knew Sarah had not seen on his face before.

Sarah saw his laptop out. "So, you got the information, Chuck?"

"Yes, _we_ did." He knew his smile was still grim.

"Is it all you…we…were hoping for?" Her eyes were eager.

"More than we were hoping for. He…won't recover from tonight."

Sarah stepped toward him but then stopped herself. Chuck could see her recalling the earlier kiss.

"It's really late, Chuck. Let's get some sleep. We have to figure out how to tell Graham—once we are back in DC—that Beridze is above ground."

Chuck turned away from her and went to his suitcase. "My turn in the shower."

}o{

Chuck was confused—confused about so many things he could not sort them out. At the very top of his list of things he was confused about was _things_ _I am confused about_. It wasn't good when the title of that sort of list reappeared as a listed item.

Chuck stuck his head under the warm water. Being Sarah's partner was turning out to be a lot like being her asset—or, rather, like pretending to be her asset. Truth be told, he was more handler than asset in Burbank, although the way he came to feel about her made the whole dynamic between them a maze of paths and levels. Handler/asset, asset/handler, cover boyfriend/cover girlfriend, cover-cover boyfriend… _Gah._

He was in love with Sarah almost immediately. Compromised from the get-go. He fell in love with a woman despite having total recall of a file longer—and darker—than a Russian novel. _His own damn words, basically_. But the woman simply could not be reduced to the file; it said a lot about her, but it did not exhaust who she was, not even close.

Chuck believed that a person's actions defined her, but he also knew how hard it could sometimes be to understand another person's actions, hard to know what she was really doing or had done. You needed to know her from the inside, and to understand the situation she acted in as she understood it. You had to care about her—that was how you accessed the relevant data. Your heart was the key to her heart.

Chuck was sure that morning on the beach: Sarah that she meant it when she asked him to trust her. He was also sure that those mission logs in her file hid, papered over, Sarah's heart.

And that was the thing. Sarah had a heart, a soft heart. It wasn't on her sleeve, but it wasn't _exactly_ MIA, either.

Her problem was that she had no clue what to do with her heart. What she did for Keto and Eka, and the way she did it, her gentleness and concern, her willingness to risk herself and him and the mission to help them—that was her heart displayed. That was her knowing what to do. But, like the glow he had seen at their first meeting, deep in her eyes behind a layer of ice, her heart was normally sequestered, walled in. Especially when her desires and her needs were at issue. But that line about Shakespeare, about the chink in the wall—that was itself a chink in the wall. She'd granted him a peek at her heart.

}o{

Chuck had asked her to tell him her middle name. He really did not know it. He had no idea what her name had been when she was born.

It was such a small thing—but he knew it was not a thing that a handler gave to an asset, and that is how she understood their relationship or kept trying to understand it. As he considered her eyes, hoping for an answer, he could see her profound struggle—part refusal, part inability, part pain.

She knew she should not answer. She was unsure she could answer. She had kept so much of herself so secret for so long that she wasn't sure any of her was available for sharing. Each moment she was silent and he looked at her was hurting her, he could tell. Finally, he let it go. He went to get the pizza for them to share.

Did he need to know her middle name to determine if she was a double-agent? No. Maybe. He was not sure.

All the lines had blurred fast. If she was a double-agent, he was a dead man, because he was too far gone to care very much. He'd die happy. Happy-ish, anyway. At least her apartment was not bugged; that would have been too risky. So, he wouldn't have to explain the question about her name to Graham and Beckman and Casey.

Casey was already full of suspicions. He was sure that Sarah was running a slow seduction on Chuck, a long con that was to end with her whisking Chuck away to some Fulcrum cave. Casey was sure because he had known Bryce Larkin and he took Larkin to confirm Sarah's type. He never tired of telling Chuck that she was playing him. Chuck took it seriously enough to act like he was guarding against it—but, truth be told, he hardly was. He was sure of her.

He had already told Graham and Beckman, and Casey for that matter, that he was sure she was not a double-agent. But no one, not Graham, especially, was listening. Graham was worried by the out-of-character actions: asking Chuck to trust her, listening to Chuck's suggestions, defending Chuck when he seemed to do something wrong—a general "softening", to use the term Graham repeated constantly, as if Sarah were a pint of Häagen Dazs.

It had become exhausting. One debrief with Sarah after missions, a fake one, and then another, a real one, after she was back at her apartment.

This had been the advantage of having her live elsewhere and having Casey in Chuck's apartment complex: Chuck and Casey could meet with each other or conference with Graham or Beckman while Sarah was gone. Sarah thought it was to ease Casey's surveillance of Chuck, but really it was to make it hard for her to keep tabs on her teammates.

He wished he had been able to meet her some other way. He hoped the partnership would be them starting over. But that was a quixotic hope. There weren't any do-overs in life. You started in the middle every time. If they were going to make it to a real partnership, and he hoped, become a real couple, they were going to have to muddle through all of it—Burbank, DC, Batumi, and whatever came after.

Chuck turned off the shower and stood in place, dripping.

}o{

As Chuck showered, Sarah fretted.

She remembered her last night in Burbank before the deception had been revealed, and before she had been…cleared. _Screw you, Graham_. She had been in her room, poised between two different futures—as she understood the situation.

Her landline was ringing—Bryce Larkin—and her cell phone—Chuck. Oddly enough, the choice, as she understood it then, was between safety and danger, between the known and the unknown. For someone not in her position, who did not have her disastrous history, that Bryce was the safe, the known choice, would have seemed incredible. _Hell, it would have seemed most incredible to Bryce. He thought of himself as dangerous glamour personified._

 _How did I stand his arrogance for so long?_

Maybe at first, it seemed charming. But Bryce's charm turned out to be all veneer. In fact, _Bryce_ turned out to be all veneer. To barely know Bryce Larkin was to know him well—as well as he could be known, in fact _._ There simply wasn't much there. Sure, there were details, a history, but it added up to nothing more than met the eye. Bryce was an 8 x 10 glossy: all there was to see was on the front, and if you turned it over, it was a perfect and absolute blank.

Bryce was safe and known. And he would not be constantly creating…changes…in her, pressuring her. Bryce deliberately pressured her…about a lot of things. But not to change, not to be better. He pressured her to do what he wanted, what he liked, what he desired.

Chuck hardly ever deliberately pressured her. But his very presence, his very person, and his maddening, glorifying faith in her, was all an intense pressure, more intense than the pressure of her most impossible missions. Although she hadn't known how to describe it when she first felt it, she later realized that on her missions, she'd believed that the worst that could happen to her was that she would die, a body would cease breathing. _Small loss_ , _really, a paper matchbook match snuffed out._ In Burbank, she realized the worst that could happen would be that she lost her…soul. _What a word. Where had that come from?_ Chuck made her aware that she had a soul. He kept her soul in his sunlit smile, and it grew. The growth hurt; it hurt like hell. But her soul had grown. It now followed her around like a glowy version of a shadow. She could not escape it. And now she was in Batumi—with Chuck and her damned glowy soul.

Chuck was the dangerous, unknown choice. Chuck's life was unscripted, and he kept inviting her to share that life, to understand herself as not exhausted by her job, by her past. To believe that she could change, change at the deepest levels. Even when she believed he was in a dead-end job, stalled at the Buy More, she never lost her sense that he was that guy—a hero—where that word, 'hero'—didn't mean _spy_. She wasn't sure exactly what it meant, maybe it couldn't really be defined. But she knew one when she saw one.

 _Chuck._

Chuck did the right thing but in essentially creative ways. Chuck so often saved the day but no one could ever predict how he would do it.

Finding out that he was an agent, that he'd been to the Farm, once the worst of the shock was over, made him seem more heroic and not less. What he'd done in Burbank was pure Chuck, not pure Farm. Sarah had excelled at the Farm because she became the Farm, became its perfect, factoried product. _Maybe the saddest comment on my sad life is that the Farm felt like…home._ Chuck endured the Farm, taking what he wanted, rejecting what he didn't. He learned to do what he rejected, but he still rejected it. She knew he could disassemble her pistol, even in the dark and quickly, but he would not touch it. Chuck was in the spy life, not of it.

And now she was facing a choice like Burbank, two ringing phones, as it were. One, a call from Graham, calling her back to a mere body, to worry only about breathing—and taking breath. The other, a call from her future self, calling her forward to a future with Chuck, to worry about having a growing soul—and a real partner. She hadn't answered her cell phone in Burbank—but she had stayed, she had chosen Chuck.

She needed to answer now. She needed an answer now. She knew her answer.

}o{

Chuck put on a t-shirt and shorts. He was exhausted and he was sure Sarah must be too. When he got out of the shower, she was prone on the bed, hugging her pillow. Her face was turned to him, though, and her eyes were open. He got in bed beside her, and then realized that she had his pillow, both pillows. He looked over at her and she realized that she did. She propped herself up on one elbow and moved the pillow she was hugging to him. She then reached over and pulled the other pillow, her pillow, into the place that his had been. As she settled into it, he noticed her take a deep breath and then frown slightly. She saw he had seen her and she turned her face away from him, rolling onto her side.

He clicked off the light. It was almost dawn. They could get a few hours of sleep before they headed to the airport.

He rolled onto his side, toward the middle of the bed, facing her back. They had, of course, slept in the same bed. But something about finding her hugging his pillow made him think that tonight was different somehow. She had quoted Shakespeare—well, he had, but it had been her fault—she had kissed him impulsively. The air in the room seemed less undecided, and far less strained, than it had since they arrived.

Maybe the partnership would work. Maybe they could muddle through.

A whisper from her side of the bed: "I chose Burbank and you, Chuck. I didn't leave with Bryce. I didn't choose Bryce. I chose Chuck…Bartowski. Even after everything, I still choose you, I choose Chuck…Carmichael."

Chuck wanted to reach out and touch her. But he wasn't able to get his arm to move. He wasn't sure the time was right.

He stayed still, thinking. After a minute, he whispered, "Sarah, this pillow seems harder than I remember from earlier. Can we trade?"

She was quiet for a long moment, then he felt her move. Her pillow got shoved toward him. He pulled his from beneath his head and held it out to her. She found it in the dark with her hands, and took it. He put her pillow under his head. He felt her turn onto her stomach, hug his pillow, and inhale. She sighed, the sigh relaxed, barely more than a breeze.

As they drifted off to sleep, and as the damp, chill winter's day dawned in Batumi, Chuck thought again of _A Midsummer Night's Dream_ , of Snout's final lines as the wall:

Thus have I, Wall, my part discharged so;  
And, being done, thus Wall away doth go.

Maybe. Maybe not soon. But maybe.

* * *

 **A/N2** Next time, the return to DC, the debrief with Graham, and the fallout of Chuck's plan. See you then!

 **A/N3** So much good Chuck fanfic lately. Grayroc's terrific tale, the moving third arc of WvonB's "The Man Who Never Was", halfachance's cheek-to-cheek "Fall with You", David Carner's exuberant "Aces, Charles", Steampunk Chuckster's Olympian "Thin Ice", and Marc Vun Kannon's on-going re-wiring of S3. I should quit trying to write and just read.


	6. Chapter 6: Blister Soul

**A/N1** This longish chapter finishes the first mission, _The Anathema Mission_. More chapters and more missions to come.

The title of this chapter is borrowed from a _Vigilantes of Love_ album. There are two songs with the title on the album. I was thinking of "Blister Soul (Reprise)" as I worked on this. Give it a listen; it's on Youtube.

Don't own Chuck. No money made. Just tinkering while I drink my coffee.

* * *

 **Turned Tables**

 _The Anathema Misson_

* * *

Saturday, January 5, 2008  
Batumi, Georgia  
3 pm

* * *

CHAPTER 6 Blister Soul

* * *

Sarah buoyed upward, reluctantly, toward consciousness, toward reality. She was deep in a dream, a sweet, sticky dream of Chuck beneath her and…She woke. She was hugging her pillow, face-down in it. She had drooled on it a little. She let go of the dream begrudgingly, loosed her embrace of the pillow.

She heard voices—no, a voice. A voice speaking Georgian. Did Chuck know the language after all and just pretend not to? She turned her head to his side of the bed. Empty. But she felt movement near her feet. _Chuck_?

The voice was the voice of a news anchor. Breaking story. She lost the thread for a moment, looked at her wristwatch. Nearly time to go to the airport. The voice tugged at her. And then it had her full attention.

"It has now been confirmed that Luka Beridze, noted Batumi businessman, was pronounced dead on the scene, as was his driver and bodyguard, Davit Bakhia. Beridze's driver lost control of the car and it left the roadway, crashing into the pillar of an overpass. Witnesses claim the car was part of a high-speed chase involving two other cars, and that multiple gunshots were fired…"

Sarah sat up and then walked on her knees toward Chuck and the TV. When she got to him, she could tell that although he did not understand the language, he had recognized Beridze's name and understood the gist of the report. She reached out and put a hand on each of his shoulders. "Chuck?"

He turned to her and his brown eyes were silty, muddy puddles in the rain. Not like Chuck's eyes, normally.

"Beridze is dead?" She asked in a funereal whisper.

He nodded, although she was asking if he understood, not asking if it were true. Chuck turned back to the TV, as did Sarah. The anchor went on in gray tones. Authorities suspected that the attack on Beridze was related to elements in the Batumi gambling underworld.

Chuck got up and went into the bathroom. Sarah heard him splash water on his face. He walked back into the room, toweling his face. Sarah looked up at him, expectantly. "Chuck?"

He turned off the TV and sat back down. He turned to her again and his eyes had settled, cleared; they were now simply sad. "I did that, Sarah. I guess I caused it."

"What do you mean, Chuck? How?" She knew he had been with her. What had he done?

"Last night, when I rummaged through Beridze's files, I found things I didn't anticipate. He was deeply involved in illegal gambling in Batumi. He was cheating the mob. Skimming. I saw it immediately—there were two sets of books—and I…forwarded proof to a couple of the mobsters. I forwarded it from an untraceable account. I did it while you were in the shower." He paused and took a deep breath.

"I was angry about Keto and Eka, about Beridze's wife and daughter, about what Graham was trying to force you to do. All of it. I was afraid Graham would send you back here. I was afraid Beridze would find Keto and Eka."

I didn't know this would happen," Chuck gestured at the dark TV screen, "I didn't even believe it would happen. But I hoped that what I did would force Beridze to go to ground, to run. Get him away from Keto and Eka—and other women and children. Get him off Graham's radar. I mean I knew this…could happen. But it wasn't the result I expected or wanted. Not the bodyguard too."

"It's ok, Chuck. Remember, I am the one who almost went into his bedroom to assassinate him."

"But you wouldn't have done it, Sarah. I know you believe you would've, but I don't. You were angry about Keto and Eka. You had a good idea what had happened to them. You had years of Graham's orders weighing on you. I still don't believe you would have done it, my voice or not. My voice just helped you to come to yourself. You'd already agreed to my plan.

"But then I tacked this on. I should've told you."

She was quiet for a moment. "Yes, if we're going to be partners we have to find a way to communicate. We do a shitty job of that in general. But me, in particular. I know I keep running hot and then cold, mostly lukewarm. You want to be my partner in a way no one else has done, Chuck, in a way I am still trying to understand…"

She looked down. "Bryce and I were…partners…within mission parameters. We had no objectives as partners that were not Graham's objectives. We were together but not…together…if you know what I mean." _Spies with benefits_. She blushed slightly and Chuck swallowed hard. "I'd have sacrificed him if the mission objectives required it; he'd have done the same to me. I understood that. At some level, I was comfortable with it. But at another level, I knew it meant we weren't in love with each other, really, and couldn't be."

"Bryce's sense of who he was a person was wholly tied to mission objectives. He was good if the objectives were secured, bad if not. The objectives were the horizons of Bryce's sense of himself, of his world. I suspect that was part of why he went rogue, got turned…Anyway, I was like that too for a long time, Chuck. Things began to change…even before Burbank. I saw a little light. But then you came along and the light…nearly blinded me...

"I know how to see in the dark, Chuck; I'm still learning to see in the light."

}o{

Chuck was still swamped by his reaction to the news about Beridze, but that did not keep him from recognizing this as perhaps the longest single speech Sarah had shared with him. He decided to risk it: he raised his hand to her face, and grazed her cheek with just the tips of his fingers. She started to lean into his hand and then caught herself. She gave him a slightly pleading look, and he put his hand down. She followed it to the bed and sat gazing at it for a second or two.

She turned her gaze to the dark TV screen and focused on it as she spoke. "Well, you know you didn't kill Beridze, Chuck. You didn't even let him die. What you did was part of what happened to him, but for you to think you are responsible would be to take too much on yourself. Beridze lived a life that brought me, that brought us, to town. This was going to happen to him sooner or later." She gazed back at his hand and reached out, putting hers, warm, across it. They sat like that for a minute.

Sarah got up. "We need to get to the airport. Transport flights aren't big on waiting for hobo spooks." She grabbed her suitcase and put it on the bed.

Chuck stared down at his dark shoes with their thick soles. Spy shoes. Sensible shoes—for killers. That's what he was wearing these days. He thought of Bette Davis: _Now, Agent Provocateur!"_ Not quite Walt Whitman's line, not quite the title of Davis' movie. The title, instead, of _his movie_ , so-called black and white—but really a panoply of gray.

 _If the shoes fit…But what they don't_? _What if they pinch like hell?_ He snuck a glance at Sarah as she closed her suitcase. _What if the only way to have the only thing you want is to walk miles and miles in them, to keep them on?_

 _Blister soul._

}o{

On board the C17 Graham had arranged to get them home, they settled in hoping to get more sleep. There weren't many seats for passengers and about half of them were on one side of the plane directly in a freezing draft, and most of the rest were on the other side, where the temperature was not only too hot, but the odor from the nearby bathroom humanly unbearable.

They found two seats in the middle, where the temperature was neither too hot nor too cold, and where the odor was faint enough to take a non-toxic breath.

Chuck settled into the uncomfortable seat. Sarah did the same beside him. Her speech in the hotel room seemed to have used up all her words. She's said nothing really since then, although he had noticed her watching him when she thought he wasn't aware, her eyes soft. Concerned.

The silence between them was neither comfortable nor uncomfortable. It just was. It stretched on for a long while, as the interior of the plane darkened.

"Chuck?"

"Yeah?" Chuck's voice sounded rusty, thick.

"How much did Graham…tell you about me?" The question was brittle.

Chuck knew this question was coming. He'd thought about it since he met her for the first time in the Buy More. His story then had been that he flashed on her, on a few of her missions. Just that much had caused friction between them.

Sarah was uncomfortable with anyone knowing anything about her. But beyond that, he knew, she was terrified of the specific things that could be known about her. He had wanted to tell her in the early days in Burbank that he loved her—and loved her even given his perfect memory of her file, of her career as Graham's Ice Queen. But he couldn't, the test of her loyalty would not allow him to tell her. But even if that hadn't been true, he knew that she had convinced herself that no one could know that file and stably care about her. She took that to be impossible. He knew why. She thought she was the only person other than Graham who knew what was in that file—and she didn't stably love herself, couldn't stably love herself. Graham used that thickening file to keep her hurrying from herself, from any chance to dwell on her past, on herself, even as she added to it.

But he couldn't lie to her about this now. He had to tell her the truth. Even if it drove her back into hiding, undid the tentative movement toward him that had occurred in Batumi.

"Graham showed me your whole file before I went to Burbank. Nothing redacted, so far as I could tell." He stopped and kept his gaze from her.

He could feel her tense and then tremble. For a long moment, she had no other reaction. "So, _everything_?" She sounded clinical and detached but the waves of anxiety rolling off her told him she was not, not close.

She went on: "That includes other…things…like psych evals." Not a question, but still brittle.

Chuck prepared himself. "Yeah, yeah, it includes everything."

"So, you _fell in love with me_ … _you love me_ …knowing what a broken horror I am?"

"No, Sarah."

"No?" The panic was immediate.

"I mean you are not a broken horror, Sarah. I couldn't love a broken horror." He said this with finality.

"Be honest, Chuck. What was your first reaction to my file?" Yet another brittle question.

Chuck started to modulate his tone. But she would know if he did that, if he controlled what he was saying instead of just saying it. With an inward gulp, he answered her, allowing his recalled emotions to color his words. "I was fascinated and I was afraid. Your photograph made my chest hurt. The mission photographs in the file made my palms sweat."

He felt her unclench fractionally. Maybe she hadn't expected his honest answer.

"A broken horror can be…beautiful, Chuck," she said—a slight indirection.

"Sarah, yes, I think you are beautiful. You know that. But I haven't been blinded by that. Even before I saw you in the Buy More, I wondered if your file was wrong, misleading. Not that you didn't go on those missions and do those things. You transcended all of that. The psych evals were asking and answering the wrong questions."

"What do you mean?" A hint of hopefulness.

"They treated effects as causes. Look, you know I remember the phrases—like 'compartmentalized'—but you are compartmentalized so you can survive your life without it destroying you. You didn't choose the life because you are compartmentalized. They started with the idea that you were not a good person, not really, and went from there. They were never interested in helping you to be good or remain good, Sarah, they were interested in keeping you sharp and deadly, keeping you in the field, keeping Graham's weapon in good repair."

"Maybe," she said, stretching the word out quietly. "But how do you know they're wrong, Chuck? I don't know they're wrong."

"And that's a good sign, Sarah, a hopeful sign. And I knew when we met."

He finally looked at her. She had a thoughtful look on her face. They sat listening to the constant drone of the engines.

"Chuck, how do you break habits that kept you alive, but now seem to be killing you?"

Chuck laughed ruefully. "I wish I knew, Sarah. Maybe the only way to break the old habits is to replace them with new ones. Force them out. Maybe only a habit can kill a habit."

She fell into a thoughtful silence again. He saw her shiver, kick off her shoes, and tuck her feet up under her. Chuck grabbed a couple of the blankets that were folded up in one of the other seats and offered her one. She took it. She was draping it over herself when she saw him start to unfold his.

"Here, Chuck," she said hesitantly, holding one edge of her blanket out to him, "it's big enough for us both."

He got under the blanket. She leaned over, carefully placing her head on his shoulder.

The engines droned on.

}o{

Unexpectedly, they had been shown to a little-used secure room at Reagan National Airport when they arrived. As they entered the room, they found Langston Graham seated in it, already glowering at them. He motioned harshly for them to sit down.

Chuck saw that there were two foldout metal chairs on their side of the table. He sat in one and Sarah in the other.

On the table was a laptop, presumably Graham's. He sat down and typed for a moment, then spun it around. The Georgian newscast they had seen before flying out of Batumi was playing. Sarah looked down at her feet and then at Chuck. Chuck managed to meet Graham's glower with a steady stare of his own.

"Thanks, Director. But that's not breaking news for us. We saw it before we left." Chuck kept his voice calm, even as Graham's expression became apoplectic.

"Damn it! When I send agents on a mission I expect them to do as they are told! If they are going to do something else, they had better clear it with me or have one hell of a story!" Graham turned the laptop so he could see it. After a moment, he turned it back to them, paused on the picture of Beridze's smashed sedan.

"So, you two decided that you would terminate Beridze _this_ way?" Graham's face became a little less distorted by rage, but he was still shouting. "Agent Walker," he pinned her with a glare, "I have granted you a certain latitude in your missions because I could always trust that no matter what else you might do, you would accomplish the mission objective—as you were told to accomplish the objective. Never have you done what you did in Batumi," Graham's eyes shifted significantly to Chuck, "but, then again, never have you had…Carmichael as your…partner! Well, I think this partnership has proven to be a very bad idea."

Chuck saw Sarah flinch, almost imperceptibly. He was certain Graham missed it. Of course, given Graham's anger, Graham wasn't paying attention to much of anything. He could tell Sarah was masking panic.

"Director," Chuck offered, "after considering what the analysts told us about Beridze and new information about him I obtained while doing some recon in Batumi, I concluded that Beridze's fabled memory was a fable, an empty boast, designed to make himself seem more irreplaceable, and to make it easier and cheaper for him to protect his network. No one was going to try to steal information that they thought only existed in Beridze's head.

"As you know, sir, I have some idea what having such a memory is like…" Chuck let that hang in the air for a minute…and then he continued. "I thought that we could do more damage to Beridze by stealing the information on his network. I was convinced he had it and that it was likely in electronic form. I was right. With Agent Walker's tactical guidance, I put a plan together. The information was there. We were able to get in and get it…all."

Chuck reached into his pocket and pushed the flash drive toward Graham. "I believe what you find there will allow you to cripple or destroy most of the terrorist groups that Beridze worked for."

Graham's anger began to abate somewhat, although he was clenching and unclenching his jaws fiercely. Chuck put his hand out and pushed the flash drive a bit further toward Graham.

}o{

Sarah could feel that something was in motion between Chuck and Graham, something that she did not understand. There was a subtext she couldn't read, couldn't quite catch. That they had gotten the information on the network seemed to have stunned Graham.

Graham reached out and finally took the flash drive. He gripped it in his fist and then looked at her and at Chuck. "This is the only copy of Beridze's information, of his network?" Sarah and Chuck both nodded.

"Is this," Graham pointed again to the picture of the sedan on the laptop, "is this your handiwork, Agent Walker. You have used this tactic before…"

"Yes, Director, I have, although you know it was only once." She snuck a sideways glance at Chuck. "Too messy and unpredictable. At any rate, I did not do _that_."

Graham's surprise showed before he could keep it from his features. "So, this was a coincidence? That's hard to believe."

"No," Chuck jumped in, "it was not a coincidence. It was me _, all me_ ". Graham jerked in his chair.

"You see, sir, I looked through Beridze's files after we got them." Sarah noticed Graham's first tighten around the flash drive. "I saw that Beridze was cheating the mob guys he was involved with out of their share of illegal gambling money. So, I sent a couple of them proof of what Beridze was doing. I did not intend for that to happen," Chuck titled his head toward the laptop without looking again at the picture on it, "although I knew it was possible. I guess the mobsters were…unhappy…about the double-cross." Chuck's tone had no victory in it, no self-congratulation. It was, if anything, sad and matter-of-fact.

Sarah watched Graham stare at Chuck for a long time, longer than seemed justified, even given Graham's obviously still-simmering anger. Chuck fidgeted a little, but never looked away from Graham. Again, Sarah felt something in motion between the two men; she felt something pass between them as they looked at each other. She was shocked when Graham looked way first.

"Sir," Sarah started, her heart thumping in her chest, "given these results, don't you think it would be premature to end my partnership with Agent Carmichael? Admittedly, we took a bit of a flyer, but for good reasons. Beridze's dead. We can likely destroy and not just inconvenience his network. These, sir, are significant results. Unignorable."

Graham glanced at her. His anger seemed mostly to have dissipated. In its place was a deep frown. He opened his hand and looked at the flash drive. He glanced up at Chuck. "If what you say is on here is on here, I will let this go. But this will not become our _modus operandi_ , we will not be negotiating whether mission outcomes were acceptable or not."

Chuck let a few beats pass, then he answered Graham's implied question. "Oh, yes, sir, what I say is on there is on there. In fact, you will find more than just the arms and terrorist network, more even than the gambling tie-ins."

Graham squeezed the hard drive in his fist again. To Sarah, it looked like he was squeezing it as a substitute for Chuck's neck. What the _hell_ was going on?

"I will give you two a couple of days off. I have another mission that I think would be a good fit for you. It's stateside. Not far away. I will get back to you. I will expect mission paperwork on Batumi within twenty-four hours." Graham stood and slammed his laptop closed. He left the room.

Sarah saw Chuck slump and blow out a long, slow breath. He smiled, rancor in his eyes but not directed toward her. Sarah started to ask what just happened. She had feared Graham would end the partnership, take Chuck from her. He hadn't. Her heart continued to thump. She felt slightly dizzy. "Chuck?"

Chuck put his finger to his lips and gave her a look that said, "Wait."

}o{

They each had parked a car at the airport, so they parted company. Chuck had still not explained. He told her he would and asked her to meet him at his apartment in forty-five minutes. Sarah agreed. But as she drove to his place, she began to second-guess herself. She had never been to his apartment. She was not sure going there was a good idea.

However, she was intensely curious about where and how he lived, what his apartment would be like. She knew there was no chasm between Chuck Bartowski and Chuck Carmichael. But there was a distance there, and she wanted to understand it. She knew her reactions to both Chucks were almost the same, but that did not make the Chucks identical.

She pulled into the parking lot of his apartment building and shut off her Porsche. She felt stretched, like there was less of her than was needed to cover her allotted space in the world. She knew it was partly her normal post-mission fatigue, the cessation of the adrenalin drip that sustained her while on missions. But she knew it had a different element in it. Frustration. She wanted to be close to Chuck, just…close to him. She could be. She could take him in her arms or ask him to take her in his. They could hold each other, really hold each other. No cover hug, no cover holding. A real embrace. Why was she resisting what she'd dreamt of night after frustrated night in Burbank? What was stopping her? _Goddamn it._

She saw that Chuck waiting for her on the edge of the parking lot. Her emotions spun her like she was riding a carnival Tilt-A-Whirl, spinning in one giant circle, her desire for him, while spinning in smaller tighter circles, her fear of what choosing him might mean, her fear of losing her identity as a CIA agent, her fear of what losing him might mean, her fear of being nothing but a spy. Round and round, inside of round and round, and up and down. She put her hands on the steering wheel, waiting for the spins to stop. She took a deep breath. Chuck was looking at her car, concern showing on his face.

She got out of her car, her legs steadying under her as she got nearer to Chuck. He smiled a worried smile. "You ok?"

"Yeah, just fatigued. Chuck, what is going on?"

"C'mon. Let me get us a drink and I will tell you. Then you can kill me."

She felt her eyes get big.

She followed him into the building. The doorman grinned when they came in. Sarah heard him say to Chuck, under his breath. "It's about damn time, Mr. Carmichael."

They got on the elevator and Chuck pressed the button for his floor. Sarah turned to him. "What did the doorman mean— _it's about damn time_?"

Chuck dropped his gaze to his shoes. For a moment she thought he was not going to answer or that he had lost track of her question. He seemed lost in thought. But then he lifted his head. "The doorman—Derrick—and some of the other folks who work here have decided that I am incapable of getting a date. They ride me about it; it's sort of become a game. I think they're embarrassed for me. You are the…first woman who has visited me here who isn't family."

"Really? That can't be right. Chuck Bartowski had been in a long slump, I know, but surely that wasn't an accurate reflection of your life, of Chuck Carmichael's life?" She laughed as she finished. It was crazy.

And then she saw his face, the mixture of rue and embarrassment. "Well...When I finished on the Farm, I wanted to date. I felt ready. The…shit that happened at Stanford was behind me. I did date, a little. But that was before I moved here. I stopped, though.

"God, Chuck, why? You are a moderately charming guy," she grinned to try to make it clear that was a deliberate understatement. His return smile was wan.

The elevator reached his floor and he stepped out, holding his arm in front of the door to make sure she had time to step out too. He led her up the hallway.

"I realized that I was lying to the women I was dating. I couldn't tell them what I did for a living. I couldn't tell them where I was when I was out of town. I felt like I was cheating on them with the CIA. I wanted something real, something solid, not something myth-eaten and fake, something sordid. I gave up on dating outside the Company.

"So, I dated some women who worked for the Company, a couple of agents. I didn't have to lie to them, or not as much. But they were both in for the long haul. Maybe one or the other would have considered something serious, maybe even something permanent. But neither had any intention of being anything other than a spy."

"What about you, Chuck? Do you have intentions to be anything else?"

"Yes. In fact, I had already typed my resignation letter when Graham called me in to look at your file. I intended to give him the letter. I had a hard copy with me. But when he handed me your file, I saw your picture. Once I saw your picture, I had to at least look at your file.

"Frankly, once I did, I forgot all about the letter and about resigning. I didn't remember it until after I left his office and was committed to the mission. I threw the letter away in a trashcan in Langley." Chuck stopped in front of a door, took out his key and opened it. As he pushed open the door and stepped aside so that she could enter, he finished. "Of course, I still have the letter on my computer. If Graham had ended our partnership, I'd have submitted the letter tomorrow."

Sarah stepped into the apartment and felt instantaneously transported to Burbank. The apartment walls were decorated with movie posters, mostly sci-fi and fantasy movies, but also a few Westerns and a couple of martial arts films. She realized that the apartment she was in had been the template of the apartment Chuck Bartowski shared with his sister and Captain Awesome. She had spent hours in this apartment; she had never been here.

She was awash in commingled familiarity and strangeness. This was part of what was holding her back: it wasn't that what had happened in Burbank had robbed her of her trust in Chuck. It hadn't. _Wasn't that remarkable?_ But it had made her aware that she both did and did not know the man she trusted. Every time she wanted to be close to him and was tempted to act on her desire, he seemed distant from her. But every time she tried to keep her distance, he seemed close to her.

She shook her head and made herself focus on her reason for coming. Her ostensible reason for coming. "So, Chuck, why didn't Graham do what it looked like he was going to do? Why didn't he end our partnership?"

Chuck had walked into his kitchen and she followed him. He opened the refrigerator and took out two beers. He held them up and she nodded. He opened them both and handed one to her. He leaned against his sink and took a long sip.

"I…uh…have something on Graham and he knows it." He was looking around the kitchen, as if he were the visitor.

"What do you mean, Chuck?"

He summoned his courage and answered, "When I looked through Beridze's files, I found one listing a handful of transactions. The payee was Beridze, of course. But the payer was someone named _Graham_. I doubt that was a coincidence. In fact, given what happened in the debrief, I know it was not a coincidence."

Sarah was stunned. "Really? What were the payments for?"

"I don't know. And of course, Graham could explain them in various ways. But I am now sure he would rather they not come to light. It may not be that he did something strictly illegal or paid for something strictly illegal, but I am willing to bet it is on the boundary line…I think whatever went on between them explains why he wanted Beridze to die in that square, in public. A message was supposed to be sent to someone."

"So, you just blackmailed the Director of the CIA? So that you could remain my partner?" She felt nauseated. She was nauseated. She knew she sounded angry. She was angry.

Chuck shot her a hurt glance, then walked past her back into the living room. He sat down and unlaced his shoes, pulling them off and tossing them, underhanded, one at a time, to land on a mat by the door. He took a deep breath. "I have been waiting all mission to get those damn things off."

He turned his attention back to her. "Yes, Sarah, although 'blackmail' seems a little dark. Maybe 'graymail'?"

"Call it whatever you want, Chuck. You should have told me. That's the second time you've kept something from me. For someone who seems to care so much about being my partner, you don't seem to want to do much partnering." As she finished, she saw self-annoyance in his eyes.

"Look, Sarah, I grant that I should have talked to you about sending the emails about Beridze. I don't have much to say in defense of myself where that decision is concerned." His eyes muddied again, as they had when he watched the newscast in Batumi.

"All I have to say I said to you in our room in Batumi. I didn't tell you about Graham because I wanted to preserve plausible deniability for you. I wasn't going to drive a wedge between the two of you. If you decide you don't want to be my partner, I want you to be able to continue your working relationship with him. He understood that you were not involved in what happened today. He knew it was my play and only my play.

"And keep in mind, I told him the truth. I kept no extra copies of Beridze's files. Well, except for here." Chuck tapped his head. "Graham can do whatever he wants with those files. It would be my word against his. But like I said, I don't think he wants any kind of attention on those transactions with Beridze. Who knows, there may be other records of them out there or other corroborating evidence." Chuck shrugged.

Sarah walked to the couch and sat down beside Chuck. She'd long known Graham was willing to cut corners. She had long feared she had sometimes been the shears he used to do it. Her anger at Chuck drained out of her, but her nausea rose. Like Chuck said, Graham might have an explanation for this—but he did not seem to be in a hurry to offer one. Just the opposite, apparently.

Sarah took a sip of her beer. She'd been holding it all this time without drinking any. She put the bottle on the coffee table in front of the couch. It was going to take some time to process what she had learned. She decided to change topics.

"Chuck, if you didn't want to lie to someone you were dating, and if you didn't want to date someone with no plan to be anything but a spy, why the hell did you fall for me, and why the hell are you working so hard to be my partner? You lied to me for months. All I know how to be is a spy. What are you thinking?"

}o{

"Look, Agent Carmichael," Graham was yelling from the video monitor in Casey's Echo Park apartment, "use that memory of yours and convince Agent Walker that you have flashed on information about her, about a past mission or two. We need to convince her that you really do have the damn Intersect. Your collation of CIA and NSA data that allowed you to save Stanfield from the bomb was inspired—and I have already praised you for that, and put a commendation on your permanent record. That convinced her. But we want her to be worried about what you know about her. It will keep her off-balance.

"Agent Walker is very protective of her past. She will not be happy that you know anything about it. But if she believes you know about her past, could potentially know all about her past, we think that will keep her from trying to simply take you. She will know that you are on your guard. She'll know that you don't fully trust her, that you fear her. She'll wonder how much Major Casey knows, how much you told him. If she is a double-agent, we need time to figure it out, and you do not want her to take you only to find out that there is no Intersect. That would be bad for you, Agent Carmichael."

Chuck tried to interrupt, but Beckman, also on the monitor, held up her hand. "Yes, we know, Agent Carmichael. You believe Agent Walker to be loyal. We don't need to hear it again. We find her actions continue to be strangely out of character. We think she wants you to believe she is compromised, that she has real feelings for you. She is trying to show you one version of herself but trying to show us—Major Casey, Director Graham and myself—a different version. She wants you to think she genuinely cares for you. She wants us to think she is simply handling you. But remember, you are handling her. You need _not_ to be compromised. _Are_ you compromised, Agent Carmichael? Do you have feelings for the asset, for Agent Walker?"

"All I will admit to is having feelings, General. I am not compromised where Agent Walker is concerned." _Well, yes, I am, completely and utterly compromised, but I am pretending that I am simply handling her. I need to find a way to protect her, to prove she is loyal without her knowing what I am doing._ Not for the first time since the mission started, Chuck was struck by the way his predicament was Sarah's predicament, just one level up, as it were. It was all so maddening.

Unless he told Sarah the whole truth, he could not tell her the truth, because any truth he told her she would take to be a truth of Chuck Bartowski's, not of Chuck Carmichael's, and so, even true, it would be a kind of lie. Unless he told her the whole truth. But if he did, they'd ship him back to DC and she would still be under a cloud of suspicion. Who knew what might happen?

Sometimes, during his days in Burbank, he felt like that girl in _The Exorcist_ , felt like he could turn his head three hundred and sixty degrees on his shoulders. That he could somehow meet himself coming and going. He was getting lost in all the lies and in all the truths; he could hardly tell them apart anymore. The only sure, true thing was how he felt when he looked at her, when he looked at Sarah. He wasn't sure what question he was, but he was sure she was the answer to it.

}o{

Chuck answered Sarah's question with a question. "Do you remember when you told me that I was supposed to trust you but not believe you?"

"Yes, I remember." She smiled slightly, remembering how angry with him she'd been, how hurt and defensive, sick to her stomach. A lot like how she'd just been feeling.

"If you thought that it made sense for me to trust you but not believe you, I hoped you would think it made sense for you to trust me but not believe me. I lied to you, yes. But from the first day, you could trust me. You can trust me now. And, for what it is worth, I have never accepted that you were nothing but a spy. Can you really tell me that you haven't thought about a different life?"

Sarah felt the spins start again. Yes, she had thought about it. She had dreamed about it. But she had no idea how to make it happen. When she had that dream, and after it ended, she often felt like a paralyzed person who dreams of walking. She dreamed of a different life, but she was not sure it was possible for her to have it. She wasn't sure it was a dream that could come true. Maybe it was just a gilded lie she told herself to keep despair at bay.

She opened her mouth to speak but no words came. The dream felt so fragile; it felt like a wish made over birthday candles: if she told it, it wouldn't come true. She couldn't admit her dream to the man she wanted to make it come true. _And he says I am not broken_.

Her mouth worked soundlessly for a few seconds. Then she blew out a discouraged sigh. But Chuck just smiled at her—her private smile, again. She couldn't keep from smiling back.

"How about this, Sarah, how about we go on a date? While we have time—between missions?"

"A…date?"

"Yeah, our second first date."

Sarah still had the spins. She stood up, her knees shaky. She still felt stretched. But she also felt warm, giddy. Dreamy. How anyone—how Agent Sarah Walker—could be so replete with feelings was beyond her.

Four seasons in one day.

She started toward the door, stopping just before she got to it. She didn't turn around.

"Chuck?"

She heard him from behind her, still on the couch. He wasn't going to crowd her after asking. "Yeah, Sarah?"

"Let me think about it, ok?"

"Ok."

She stood still long enough to hear his answer and to feel the smile claim her face, then she went out the door.

As she left the building, she heard Derrick exclaim softly to himself in sing-song as he held the door. "Congrats, Mr. Carmichael. Zero to sixty in nothing flat." Derrick clearly thought they were a couple. She was increasingly sure she was the only one who doubted that.

}o{

Sarah parked at her apartment complex still overwhelmed by her mixed and shifting emotions: a chameleon running on a Grateful Dead tour t-shirt—too many colors, too damned fast. She climbed out of the car.

She needed to get in her bed. She needed thirty minutes of complete silence—or thirty years. She climbed the stairs and walked automatically into the hallway.

She heard a throat clear.

She looked up to see Ellie standing by her door, a bottle of wine in her hands. They hadn't talked since Burbank. Ellie and Devon had been whisked away on a top-secret assignment, so she never got a chance to see them and had no way of contacting them once she was back in DC.

Sarah's first reaction was to sink inwardly. She was not prepared for this, not prepared for Ellie, so soon after the mission with Chuck. Her second reaction was to feel a stab of excitement. She had genuinely liked Ellie and she had hoped Ellie's apparent affection for her was real. Ellie and her brother were so much alike, after all.

Ellie waited for Sarah to get to the door before she spoke. "Hey, Sarah. Mom told me where I could find you." _I have now officially had two more visitors here than in the whole time I lived here before._ "I came as soon as Devon and I got into town. I wanted to…well, apologize, explain, make it up to you…a little." She held out the wine, her expression acknowledging that it was a mere token, but also hopeful Sarah would take it. She did. She opened the door and invited Ellie in.

As Ellie walked in and looked around, Sarah felt self-conscious about her apartment. She hadn't when Frost visited. Frost was right: they understood each other. Frost understand why her apartment felt like a demo—a place the mimicked a place people lived, but where no one did.

But she knew that the sense of home in the apartment Ellie shared with Chuck in Burbank had been mostly Ellie. The décor might have been chosen to reinforce Chuck's cover first and foremost, but the warmth and comfort of the place radiated from Ellie. Sarah knew that the moment she stepped toward Ellie to take the wine. That feeling of warmth and comfort was palpably radiating from her in the hallway. It had not been fake in Burbank.

 _What_ are _Chuck and Ellie doing in the CIA?_ _Family business?_

Ellie noticed Sarah notice her slight frown as she glanced around. She turned the frown up into an apologetic smile. Sarah shrugged, but not self-defensively. Her home was what it was—a home in name only.

Sarah gestured to one end of the couch, the end Frost sat on, and asked, "Do you want me to open the wine, Ellie?"

Ellie seemed to be weighing the possibilities, then she shook her head. "No, maybe i _n vino veritas._ But I'd be happy enough with some…sisterly…chat, and a little _verum_." Ellie watched Sarah's face when she used the word, 'sisterly'. Sarah felt the corners of her eyes crinkle a bit and Ellie visibly relaxed. She sat down.

"Believe it or not, Sarah, I'm not really here to talk about my brother. I've heard a fair amount on that topic from my mom. I suspect you got an earful when she visited. She's not longwinded, but she's forceful." Sarah nodded. Then she laughed and Ellie joined her.

"I really just wanted to talk to you about…well, whatever, life, I guess. And to see if we can't establish as real the friendship that came to be during all that fakery in Burbank."

Sarah sat in expectant silence, unsure how to begin the conversation and hoping Ellie would do it.

"So, Mom says you two just got back from a mission—your first together? And before you ask, Mom seems to know everything; she has a finger in every pie."

"Yes, just back. We were debriefed by Graham at the airport." She saw Ellie's surprise at that. After talking with Chuck, Sarah thought she understood why Graham had chosen to debrief there and not at Langley. But Sarah offered nothing. She wasn't sure how to handle Chuck's gambit. If he wanted Ellie to know, he could tell her. "And then Chuck and I had some things…to talk about. So, I went to his place for a little while."

Ellie's lips twitched into a smile. "A second debrief?" Sarah rolled her eyes and laughed with her mouth closed. Ellie made a face. "Sorry, Sarah, a common spy pun. Devon likes it more than he should."

Sarah laughed again and Ellie's color rose. She smiled. "Oh, sorry, Sarah, TMI, I guess."

Sarah shrugged again, still laughing. "No problem." She waited for Ellie to continue.

"Sarah, when I first met you in Burbank I was...terrified of you. And I was terrified for my brother. I was never made privy to your file, but I was briefed.

"I wasn't and I'm not judging. My mother is Frost, after all. Any judgment I make will follow me home, so to speak. I don't know how you came to be in this life, to choose this life. But I do wonder why you are in it. My brother is a misfit in it.

"You didn't seem to be at first, but the more time I spent with you in Burbank, the more I came to think that being a spy has been your constant deep cover assignment for…what is it, a decade? That's how long Mom said you've been doing this. I guess I thought I saw the woman peek out from beneath that deep cover now and then. I believe she is there. Is she, Sarah, or am I just under an illusion—or was that a part of you playing me? After all, you were…lying to me too, even if I knew it a lot of the time. I don't know…I mean, I love my mom, Sarah, but she is all spy. Being a spy is not her cover. But you seem different to me. Am I wrong?"

Sarah thought she had evaded the issue of her dream at Chuck's apartment. But here it was again in a different form.

Ellie wasn't asking about Chuck, or for Chuck. She was asking about Sarah, for Sarah herself. Was being a spy her deep cover? Had she chosen to be a spy so she could hide—from everyone, from herself? How could the deepest part of her identity be false? Had she and Graham created a character, a persona, that they both mistook for the real person?

"I don't know how to answer that, Ellie. I lied to you in Burbank, but I wasn't playing you, if you understand me. The time I spent in your apartment there was the first real taste of home I can remember, and it tasted…sweet." Ellie smiled.

"Even if it turned out not to be real, exactly," Sarah continued and Ellie's smile darkened. "But it was sweet. I won't deny that. But I am not sure it's…a meaningful possibility for me, for someone with my habits and my history. Can a woman change her life so completely, Ellie? Turn a freight train barreling in one direction to veer off in a new one?"

"Why not? If that's what she wants? We're not trains. There are no tracks. We're free agents, Sarah, even Special Agents are free agents. Your future is not fixed. You can have a say in what it turns out to be. You just have to _speak_ , to insist on getting your say. Say what Sarah wants—not what Graham wants, not what Chuck wants, not what I want. What _you_ want. Trust your heart, not your history."

They talked a while longer, but Ellie could see Sarah's fatigue. They hugged at Sarah's door and Ellie left. Sarah closed the door, then leaned her forehead against it. The cool wood of the door seemed to put a stop to the spins, although they had slowed a lot during Ellie's visit.

 _You just have to_ speak.

She pulled her phone from her pocket and touched a name. It started ringing and kept ringing. She wanted to speak, but not leave a voicemail. She started to disconnect before the call rolled over. But then there was an answer. She heard his voice. "Hello?"

"Chuck, it's Sarah. About that date. Yes."

She told him she'd call tomorrow and they could settle the details. The smile in his voice created one on her face.

After ending the call, she locked her door. She bent down and untied her shoes. She took them off, carried them to her bedroom, and stowed them in her closet. She reclined on her bed, sighed, and wiggled her toes.

* * *

 _End of The Anathema Mission_

* * *

 **A/N2** And…that's a wrap on this mission, gentle readers!

Expect an interlude chapter in the not-too-distant future, "Another First Kiss", as our favorite couple goes on a date. A new mission will follow, tentatively entitled, _His, Hers and Ours_.

I'd love to hear from you about this chapter or about the entire first mission or about the entire story.

Trying to ride the pulses of two people as unclear and as unsure about themselves as Chuck and Sarah are here, and to write the ride down, is demanding work. Absorbing, but demanding. Thanks for sticking with me.


	7. Chapter 7: Another First Kiss

**A/N1** A short break between missions. Back pages, again…and a dinner date. Plot elements that will overarch the missions are coming into view. Thanks so much for reading the story and for the reviews and PMs. They are much appreciated.

The chapter title is a nod to one of my favorite bands, They Might Be Giants, and their wonderful tune, "Another First Kiss", a strangely appropriate Charah tune. If you don't know it, it is easy to find online.

I don't own Chuck. Making no money.

* * *

 **Turned Tables**

 _Interlude_

* * *

Monday, January 7, 2008  
Washington DC  
6:30 pm

* * *

CHAPTER 7 Another First Kiss

* * *

Sarah checked her dress in the full-length mirror of her bedroom. The dress was wonderful, short, deep blue, shimmering. She knew it made her eyes seem to float in mid-air. Her skin was rosy, simply from excitement, and its contrast with the dress and her eyes made their blues intensify.

She had butterflies. She was going on a date with Chuck. A real date. She had never really gone on a date with a man she…cared for. _Ok, a man she loved_. A feeling of newness suffused her, of _vuja de_ , of never really having done this before.

She and Bryce had cover dated on missions a few times, posing as boyfriend and girlfriend, but they had never been boyfriend and girlfriend. Neither of them had ever used those words. They went on missions together, and they went to bed together—and that was that. They never slept in bed together until the morning, unless the mission required it.

They never actually went on a date. Bryce would have scoffed at the idea. Maybe she would have to, although the thought had crossed her mind, if only to wonder why dating seemed ruled out for them. They never had a _romantic_ relationship, even though they were taken to be a couple—even by themselves.

It wasn't that Sarah expected flowers or candy or poetry—the thought of Bryce's poetry made her giggle aloud—but it would have been nice for their time together to have been marked as meaningful, instead of just being, well, what it was. Unmarked, passing, ephemeral. Sex for them burnt off excess adrenaline after missions. Or it cleared their minds before they started mission paperwork. Or it reaffirmed that they were human—when what the mission required made that doubtful. Sex between them was professionally liminal—not officially part of their missions, not officially not part of their missions. A demoralizing admixture of the impersonal was always there.

That didn't make the sex _bad;_ it did keep it from being special, from making Sarah feel special. Like so much in her life, it just was what it was. She had always had a sure if elusive sense that it should have been more. That she deserved more. That she should have felt loved, and not just spent…not just felt relief or release or whatever it was she felt. Not that those were bad, relief or release, but they were not intermingled with the right kind of good. She felt like Bryce deserved more too, but he showed no signs of finding anything missing in their relationship.

While she had been with Bryce she had, as she so often did, denied her own feelings. She dismissed her feeling that she deserved more as a little girl's fantasy, or as a vestigial illusion caused by too many classic Hollywood romantic comedies. _A Cary Grant hangover._ But, denied or dismissed, the feeling never really disappeared. And then— _Chuck_.

Even though she had never been with Chuck _in that sense_ , she already knew from her time with him that her feeling that she deserved more was not a fantasy or an illusion. Or, if it was, she shared it with Chuck, because everything about him in relation to her, the way he looked at her, the way he talked to her, the way he touched her, each carried his complete conviction that she deserved the very best he had to give. Each carried the complete conviction that she was lovable—not just that she could be loved—news enough for her, given how she often felt about herself—but that loving her was appropriate, apt, fitting. That turned her and her world upside-down. Bryce had never, not for a millisecond, approached that complete conviction. Yes, he was fond of her, in his way, but she felt like an accessory to his super spy life, the necessary complement to his favorite Armani tuxedos.

By contrast, Chuck was so focused on her most of the time that he forgot himself altogether. He couldn't regard her as an accessory, because when she was near him, she was all there was.

She understood how he felt because she felt the same way when she was near him. Or she wanted to feel the same wasy—and she did when she allowed herself to, when she forgot to monitor herself. Like she had outside Beridze's when they broke into the house. Like she had when Chuck showed her the flash drive.

And they were going on a date. Tonight. A real date. She couldn't decide whether to hug herself or pinch herself. She hugged herself. Pinching herself, she decided, was a bad idea—if this was a dream, she did not want to wake up.

}o{

Chuck had stopped by Ellie's. He needed to know what she thought of what he was wearing. He'd put on a pair of dark jeans and a green dress shirt. He had on a sports coat with a very subtle and dark blue-green check. He thought he looked good. But he was going on a date—a real date—with Sarah Walker. He needed Ellie's approval.

He stopped in front of Ellie's door, recalling times in college he had gotten dressed for dates with Jill, or, rather, Julie. He was still tempted to call her 'Jill', since that was the name he gave her as Chuck Bartowski's ex-girlfriend. It was not her real name. Her real name was Julie.

Julie Roark.

They'd taken a programming class together. She was attractive, very attractive, and he had noticed her the first day. She was the girl next door—if the girl next door was the very attractive daughter of one of the wealthiest men in America, the creator and CEO of Roark Enterprises, Ted Roark. Chuck had not known that about her when he noticed her. In fact, he didn't know who she was until he had talked to her—awkwardly—after a couple of classes. If he had known, he would never have spoken to her. He'd have assumed she was out of his league.

But she seemed to like him well enough to stand and chat, and even to come up with topics to extend their conversations after Chuck's inevitable avalanche of rambling comments dwindled to scattered bouncing pebbles. When he found out who she was, he decided he should give up talking to her. But after the next class, she came over to him and started the conversation. She asked him if he'd like to get coffee and of course, he said he would. They'd talked for a couple of hours. That became their pattern. A couple of weeks later, he reached across the table at the campus coffee shop and cautiously put his hand on hers. She looked down at their hands and then grinned—and just like that, they were a couple.

Those had been heady days. Chuck had dated now and then, but he had never really had a girlfriend. Julie was smart. She had traveled. She loved popular culture but was also a fan of high culture. They went to film festivals—David Lynch (Chuck still had flashbacks to scenes from _Eraserhead_ ), _Mystery Science Theater 3000_ , 1950's creature features. They went to Comic-Con and to Dragon-Con. They helped each other with programming assignments, and pushed each other in class. It was too good to be true.

It really was _too good to be true_.

The first sign that something was off was when she went out of her way to keep Chuck from knowing that her father was going to be on campus. She maneuvered Chuck and her father so that they never met, never knew they might have met. Chuck only found out it had happened when a casual friend who had just started working at the campus coffee shop mentioned that Ted Roark had come in and bought coffee, and that Julie had been with him. She never mentioned the visit.

The second sign was more complicated. They'd been dating for a while, and their time alone had become more and more full of intense, breathless making-out. But although Julie seemed as eager for more as Chuck was, she would stop things each time. Chuck was perfectly willing to wait, to allow her to decide when, if, anything more happened. He would never touch a woman unless he was sure that his request to do so had been given an enthusiastic "Yes!" But Julie stopped things, and she would not say anything about why. She would pull away and everything halted. She would not explain why she pulled away or what she was waiting for or expecting from him. She would just say that she couldn't talk about it. That went on for a long time. Chuck had gotten to the point that he was reluctant to allow their time alone to become physical at all. He felt unmoored and lost, and she left him adrift.

Or she did until the first night of his final semester. He heard a knock on his door and he got up. Julie was standing there. She asked to come in and Chuck, of course, invited her in, worried that something was wrong. She asked to use the bathroom and he nodded. She went in and when she came back out, she was naked. Chuck had sat down on the edge of his bed. She launched herself at him. The next hour was a blur of lips and limbs and urgent moonlit whispers. After they had both regained their breath—after Chuck's vision cleared, he had been able to smile up at her as her hair hung down, a curtain around both their faces. She kissed him with a passion he had never felt from her, fully engaged. Then she got up, went into the bathroom, put on her clothes and headed toward the door. Just before she opened it and just before Chuck could ask what was going on, she turned and gave him a tiny, enigmatic smile.

"I wanted that, Chuck. I know you did too. Thank you."

She slipped out as Chuck answered in dull, stupid reflex: "You're welcome."

The next day, she was gone. The story on campus was that her father had decided to go to Europe personally to oversee new Roark Enterprises projects, and that Julie would complete her final classes online. She left no note. His emails went unanswered. His voicemails provoked no response.

She was gone.

His last words to her were, "You're welcome."

Chuck fell apart. Nothing made sense to him in classes or outside them. He numbly went to lectures, numbly went home, numbly ate, and numbly slept. _Numb_. He felt nothing for weeks until he saw a picture online, one Saturday when he was pointlessly googling Julie's name again. This time, something new showed up. A picture of Julie and Bryce Larkin together at a party in London.

Chuck and Bryce were in the same frat and in the same major. They lived in the same house, the frat house. They were friends. But things between them had gotten strained and strange when Chuck and Julie started dating. Chuck knew Bryce was jealous—although Chuck was never sure if Bryce was jealous of Julie or jealous of Chuck dating Ted Roark's daughter (whoever she might have turned out to be). Julie had never seemed interested in or by Bryce one way or the other, so Chuck had ignored Bryce's occasional snarking and random jabs. But there the two of them were in the online picture together, Bryce in a tux and Julie in a racy little black dress, pressed together on a dance floor.

Chuck stared at the picture for a long time. Then he shut down his computer and never searched for Julie Roark again. He heard things, occasionally ran across mutual friends. But he tried to forget her. He finished school in a daze of helplessness and hurt. Stanford gave him a diploma but kept his heart. He wandered for a while, physically and spiritually. Then he began to think about disappearing—about _disappearing_ as a career choice. He started thinking about the CIA, about going to the Farm. Enshadowed as his life had become, why not make a life in shadows?

He eventually recognized that his relationship with Julie had obviously been caught up in larger structures of her life of which he knew nothing. He had dated someone who had lied to him by omission for months and months. He'd been raised, mostly, by a woman who was allergic to the truth. His sister's job in the CIA meant that she was now constantly keeping things from him. Chuck was sick to death of being on the outside of all the secrets. He wanted to be on the inside of some. So, against his Mom's and his sister's vehement insistence that he rethink his decision, he headed to the Farm.

Had he been in love with Julie? Yes, he supposed he had. He loved what he knew of Julie. The worst thing about his feelings for Julie was that he knew, in retrospect, that she had kept herself back from him, not just physically, but emotionally. That had registered on him early. But he thought it would change, told himself it had changed. It never did. Except for that bizarre, inexplicable final night.

And now he was going on a date with the most mysterious woman in the world. Yes, the most mysterious, despite Chuck's scarily clear recall of her entire file. Chuck wondered what the difference was between Julie and Sarah. Was he trying to find himself "a girl just like the girl who married dear old dad"—Chuck sang the song in his head—was he really doomed to frosty, secretive women?

But Sarah, for all her skittishness and hesitancies, never succeeded in keeping herself hidden from him. He wasn't sure she wanted to. Yes, she kept almost all the details of her history back. But she did not keep her heart back—not the way Julie had. From that first meeting, it had been visible, if obscured. And on their first date or 'date' or whatever it was, it had simply been visible, despite her lies and half-truths about her _Bruce_ -involving history. He and she had connected at the El Compadre that night, not as he and Jill had connected at the coffee shop, by means of shared interests, shared hobbies, similar favorites in music and films. He and Sarah had almost nothing in common—well, Bryce—but he had offered to be her baggage handler and she had told him she liked him.

No matter how lame those two comments might have seemed out of context or to an uninvested onlooker, they had both been… _confessions_. They committed to each other that night, underlined by Sarah's request the next morning for Chuck to trust her. Neither of them understood that commitment at the time. Neither of them understood it now. But it was there and had been there, a steady undercurrent of their time in Burbank and in DC and in Batumi. No commitment like that had been part of his relationship with Julie.

}o{

Ellie opened her door in response to Chuck's knock and invited him inside. "Devon's working late, so it's just me. So, little brother—a real date with your best girl? At long last."

She led him into the center of the living room, then she turned to him and, she put her hand out—and then, with her index finger pointing down, she made tight circles, commanding him to turn around. He shook his head slightly and she frowned. Chuck put his arms out and spun slowly around. When he was facing her again, she was staring into the distance, considering what she saw. She refocused on him.

"That'll do, pig, that'll do." Ellie smiled through the words.

Chuck felt slightly crestfallen. " _Babe_ —really?"

Ellie chuckled. "Yes, really. And I'd make that the last time tonight you say 'babe', if I were you. Word in Langley is that your date tonight is the Ginsu Girl. I'd watch my step."

"Thanks, Sis, thanks a lot. Because that makes things better. Like I'm not already so nervous my palms are sweating bullets."

"Bullets, knives—are you two going armed on this date?" Ellie's question continued her joking tone, but she was partly serious.

"Um, no, at least, I'm not. I don't even have my CIA badge with me. I'm not going on this date as a Special Agent. I'm going as Chuck Carmichael—in all my blazing nerd glory." He gave Ellie a hopeful grin. She shook her head but beamed at him.

"Good for you, Chuck. What about Sarah?"

"I don't know. I hope so. But I wasn't going to say anything, one way or the other. I'm trying hard to let this—whatever this is—happen between us on her schedule. She's…uh…she's not a normal girl." Chuck gaze was introspective. "It's been really hard for me, Ellie. You know how I am," he heard Ellie giggle lightly, "I want something real with her so much…I have had _something_ real with her for a long time now…But we've never been able to figure out or tell each other what it is. Some of that was circumstance…"

"Right, Chuck, but not all, or you'd likely have been able to figure this out after the circumstances shifted. Her problems—and yours, remember—are internal, not external. I don't have any doubt she wants this to work as much as you do. But neither of you knows what 'working' means yet, particularly Sarah. You're going to have to live into that knowledge together. There's no getting it to it early, no sneak peek, no trailer. You two are just going to have to live your way into being partners…or more. Breathe, Chuck, and let her breathe too. If she's worth knowing—and she is—she's worth getting to know."

Chuck nodded vigorously. "Ok, Ellie. You…you like her, don't you?" Chuck wanted Ellie to like her, believed Ellie did, but they hadn't had much time to talk after Burbank.

"Yes, Chuck, I like her a lot. I hope we will be close. I visited her last night—at her place."

"Really? What did you talk about?" Chuck's curiosity made his eyes shine.

"That's between us, Chuck, although don't worry, it was nothing top secret. She was tired; I didn't stay long." Ellie stepped to him and smoothed the lapel of his jacket. "You look good, little brother. She's going to like what she sees. –Was that a little creepy?" Ellie scrunched her features together.

Chuck laughed softly. "Maybe a little. But I get it and I thank you for it. I feel better."

Ellie grabbed him and hugged him. "You two both deserve good things. You make a great pair. Let it happen." She kissed his cheek.

He was about to leave when she called out to him. "Flowers, Chuck?"

He turned. "In the car, Ellie. Gardenias."

}o{

Chuck stopped his BMW at the valet stand and hurried around the car, tossing the keys to the valet as he got to Sarah's door. The valet caught the keys, then dropped them when Chuck opened the door and Sarah stepped out.

Chuck heard the keys jingle as they hit the ground, and the sound chimed with the jangling of his heart as he met her eyes. Had anything else, in the whole ginormous history of everything, everywhere, ever really been _blue_? Her eyes were patent and paradigm. They were what all other so-called blue things strained to be.

She smirked a bit. "You know, Chuck, I can open and shut my own car door." Her tone was flat.

Chuck began to backpedal. "Right, right. I know that, Sarah. I do. I just wanted to do this for you. I'm so much closer to helpless than you will ever be." Chuck heard the valet grunt in amusement. "I mean I am not…uh…impugning your independence when I do something for you that I know you can do for yourself. It's because you can do it for yourself. That's what makes it a...gift, I guess, or a compliment…and…"

Sarah's laugh was breathy and musical. She reached out and smoothed his jacket much as Ellie had earlier. "It's ok, Chuck. I was just giving you a hard time. Thanks for being so sweet."

They had reached the door. They stood there for a minute, Sarah waiting to see if Chuck would open it, Chuck wanting to but now self-conscious about wanting to. Finally, Sarah arched an eyebrow at him and he opened the door. "Sweet?" He sighed. "Thanks for making me feel like I'm eight, or like I've been permanently banished into the dreaded Friend Zone."

Now it was Sarah's turn to be self-conscious. She was quiet for a few steps and then she put her hand gently on his arm. "Chuck, you are _sweet_ , and that is a good thing. My life has been largely empty of sweetness—until you. Maybe it seems like a weak word, but, I promise, for me, it is anything but that. After all, what else should a woman say to describe her personal baggage handler? And, believe me, I hope we are friends, I believe we are friends, but you are not in the Friend Zone."

Chuck's eyes twinkled with merriment. Her callback to the El Compadre. Her playing with words. Her hand, squeezing his arm enough for him to feel it through his jacket and shirt.

"I hope you don't mind…Latin food—again." Chuck had chosen the Del Campo, a Peruvian steakhouse. Akin to the El Compadre, but not a repeat. The same but different. Different but the same. The décor had a slight cowboy feel, an easy masculine flair. Heavy wood and leather, but also lots of colors and large windows. The place was more Morochuco, less Magnificent Seven.

}o{

The hostess, a small, vivacious young woman with dark brown hair and brown eyes, flashed a crooked smile at Chuck and allowed it to linger on them, although it was not for Sarah. Sarah felt an odd tightening in her chest. _Familiar_.

"Hi! Do you have a reservation?"

Chuck grinned at the young woman. Sarah's chest tightened incrementally. "Sure. _Carmichael_ is the name. I think we are just a minute or two early." He turned to Sarah but hitched when he saw her frowning slightly. "You ok?" He leaned toward her and the question _sotto voce_.

Sarah forced a smile. "Yes, just…um, thinking."

The hostess led them to their table. As Chuck and Sarah sat down, the hostess reached out and rested her hand on Chuck's shoulder. She gave him a personal, and not a professional smile. "I hope you enjoy your evening, Mr. Charmichael. If you or your…sister…need anything, let me know."

"Oh, no," Chuck offered, "she's not my sister, she's my…" The hostess had left her hand on Chuck's shoulder and she waited for him to finish telling her what Sarah was. The hostess glanced at Sarah for a split-second through narrowed eyes.

Sarah then knew she had lived through this moment—or one much like it—in Burbank. There, she had told the woman—that damned Lou—that she was Chuck's girlfriend. But that answer had been for the cover. _Well, sort of. Be honest, Sarah. That answer was for Lou. You were claiming your guy._ If she said the same thing now, she could not walk it back as a cover thing. She'd have to own it. Chuck's mouth was working, guppy-like, as he tried to decide what to say. "She's my…"

"… _compadre_." Sarah finished the sentence. She reached across the table and took Chuck's hand, rubbing her thumb across its back in a decidedly non-sisterly way. She saw that both Chuck and the hostess were watching her thumb.

"Well, ok, but the…offer stands, Mr. Carmichael." Chuck nodded without looking back at the young woman. As Sarah watched the hostess walk away, she felt the tightening in her chest lessen. She switched her gaze back to Chuck, only to find him still watching her hand and her unruly thumb, which had, unbeknownst to her, kept gently rubbing Chuck's hand. She watched it for a minute too, as if it were not her thumb. She willed it to stop, staring at it like she was sending it a telepathic signal, and finally, it did stop. Chuck lifted his eyes to her. His eyes were so full she was overwhelmed. She grabbed her menu from the tabletop and began to thumb through it.

"Sarah…" Chuck began, and stopped when he saw her involved with the menu. He picked up his menu and mirrored her.

}o{

They'd both had a salad and ribeye and grilled green chile potato puree. Then they'd shared a slice of charred fig cheesecake. Sarah had smilingly managed to eat more of it than her half, pretending to be sneaky about it, but Chuck was glad to let her have it. The meal was fantastic. The conversation over dinner had been relaxed, light. Sarah had even steered it at times, talking about movies they'd watched together in Burbank and laughing at herself for her Illinois Jones _faux pas_ in Batumi. Their glances had often interlocked and each had held the other's gaze. They had laughed a lot. But they could both feel the evening hurrying toward its end. They were finishing their coffee. Chuck decided to see if they could talk about weightier matters. He could hear Ellie in his head: _Careful, Chuck._

"So, tell me something, Sarah. Bruce," Chuck grinned, "I mean, Bryce. What happened? I mean before you got to Burbank. I know he became your…partner and then…ah…more. How did it end? You don't have to tell me. I just remember that what you said on our first date about…the end of things with him seemed true, plus or minus some details." He held his hands up in front of him as he finished, palms toward her, to underscore that she need not answer. At first, Chuck thought she was going to let the question pass without an answer. That was ok; he knew he was asking a lot. She wrapped both hands around her coffee cup and stared into it. She blew a breath out through pursed lips.

"We'd been…partners, then…a couple…for a while. But things began to get strained between us. Some of it was…well, professional. Bryce is…Bryce was a good spy. But he overestimated himself. He honestly thought he could do anything, that there were no limits on the missions he could accomplish. That was an unfortunate pride on his part. Because Bryce had limits. We all have limits. Bryce began, little by little, to resent me. It started as little, weird _guy jokes_ —for lack of a better term. For example, one day, after a mission, he joked that his file was bigger than my file. I didn't think it was funny, but I let it pass. But then he started asking me about my past missions."

She paused for a long time. Chuck quietly sipped his coffee and waited. She made a face, regret or pain or both, and then went on.

"I have always been…unwilling to talk about past missions and he knew that. But it was like he had to know, like it was eating at him. He kept asking me about them. 'If you won't tell me details, just tell me how many.' Stuff like that. He kept telling me that if he mattered to me I would tell him about my past missions.

"He started taking solo missions between our partnered missions. I couldn't tell if he was jealous of my spy past or if he was in competition with it—or both. But he just pushed and pushed. Finally, I relented. I told him…some things, told him about some past missions. He freaked out. He never explained it.

"And then one day, just after a mission of ours, he vanished. I was told he'd taken a deep cover assignment from Graham. Long term, no backup, huge stakes. The kind of mission that can make an agent a legend. Graham refused to talk to me about it, and not too long after that, I got a new mission, my last before Burbank."

"Budapest," Chuck spoke without thinking. Sarah jolted, spilling a little of her coffee over her hands and onto the table.

"Sorry, Sarah," Chuck whispered as he grabbed his napkin from his lap and began to clean up the table top.

Sarah wiped her hands on her napkin. She grinned at him tightly. "It's ok, Chuck, I just can't get used to the thought that you know so much about me." Her eyes clouded. She shook her head in wonderment. "How can you know what you know and sit there, across from me, and look at me like you did after…that woman…the hostess…left?"

"All I really know, Sarah, is that you are a woman I want to share cheesecake with. Well _, kinda_ share, since I think I got rooked out of my fair share." She pushed a strand of hair back behind her ear and continued to shake her head—but she laughed.

Then her laughter ebbed. "Yes, Chuck, Budapest. How…much do you know about that?"

"Not much. Graham…or someone…blanked that mission paperwork. I did see that an agent named Ryker had made inquiries about the mission _ex post facto_ , but Graham ignored them." Chuck watched Sarah's face. None of what he said seemed to surprise her.

She switched back to the earlier topic. It was clear Budapest was off-limits. "I thought Bryce was dead when I came to Burbank, like everyone else, I guess." She pursed her lips and gazed out into the restaurant, at everything and nothing. "I still don't really understand all that went wrong between us. I worry sometimes that telling him about my past missions played a role in his becoming a double-agent and then coming back for me. I wonder if he was trying to prove something to me or to himself or to…"

"The spy gods?" Chuck caught her gaze as she looked at him and he held it.

"Yes…something like that."

She drank more of her coffee. Then she got an amused and malicious gleam in her eyes. "Ok, Chuck, since I answered your question, you owe me an answer to one of mine."

Chuck sat back and raised one eyebrow, then another. She leaned her chin into her hand and laughed with her mouth closed. Chuck shrugged, "Alrighty, ask away, Agent Walker. But remember, I too have been trained to resist truth serum." He picked up his coffee cup and held it out as he said 'truth serum', and took a big drink from it with studied nonchalance. Sarah shot him a huge smile. The closeness she felt to him in Burbank was returning.

"Is that right, Agent Carmichael?" He nodded, his chin tilted in the air in mock defiance. Sarah stood up and walked around the end of the table, sliding in on Chuck's side of their booth. She put one arm behind him and reached across him to his opposite shoulder with the other. Holding him in that embrace, she leaned into his ear. "Chuck," she whispered, her voice deep and her breath warm and wet, "tell me all about Lou, the sandwich girl."

Chuck did not answer her immediately. His face had turned red and his ears redder. After a moment, a tremor passed through him and he turned slowly to look at her. "Ok, there is no training known to humankind that would make me able to resist you when you do that."

She leaned in even closer, putting her cheek against his and again whispering in his ear, making sure that her lips were in slight contact with it as she did. "So, tell me everything, Agent Carmichael."

It took him a minute again, but he finally coughed out a question. "What do you want to know?" Her face became more serious.

"Was she really just a sandwich girl, Chuck, or was she an agent or an actress or something?" She had moved her head back and was once again speaking normally, but she had not ended her embrace of Chuck.

"She really was a sandwich girl, Sarah, and she really was a smuggler of meats." He glanced at Sarah's face and she nodded. She had known.

"And your feelings for her were…real or fake, Chuck?" Chuck squirmed in her arms. This was the real question.

"I'm not sure I can answer that question, Sarah."

"What do you mean," Sarah asked, as she ended the embrace but remained on his side of the booth.

"I mean that everything was mixed up for me. She came into the Buy More and she approached me as if she were working off your first-visit script. 'Phone broke. Need help. Gonna name a sandwich after you.'"

"I've never named a sandwich after you, Chuck."

"No, no, but you were…or seemed interested in me." Chuck snuck a look at her from the corner of his eye.

"I was. And I get your point: so was she."

"Yeah…right. Except she was all-in from the first moments. She pulled back a little when she found out about you. But for a while there, a few days, I wondered if it might not be easier just to walk on the mission. To tell Graham I was done, like I'd planned, and to go and admit it all to Lou and see if she could be interested in an ex-CIA agent with few current prospects. I told you I quit dating for a while before Burbank. But things with you were so frustrating…so hard. The cover inside the cover. Having feelings for you but having to pretend that I was only pretending those feelings around everyone else—and knowing how much those feelings…bothered…you. How much I wanted you. Knowing you were terrified that I might come to know more about your past even while I knew all about your past…Layers like damn baklava…

"Lou liked me. She was an open book. Simple. Normal. If I hadn't seen that poster and remembered her ex-boyfriend from a file I was shown…well, to be honest," he snuck another look at Sarah, "I'm sure nothing would have happened at the end of the day, because…"

"Because of _what_ , Chuck?"

"Because of _you_. Because of how I felt about you. Because of that…lavender whisper…you wore to my room when we were going to…pretend to…make love." She pressed closer to him.

Sarah leaned to his ear. His use of 'whisper', his memory of her, caused her entire body to warm. "Did you like that, Chuck?"

"Sarah, you now know I have a _photographic_ memory. Do you have any idea what you did to me by wearing that? It's been my unchangeable mental screen saver ever since that night. It is not good for my sleep…or my waking hours for that matter...or for just walking around." Chuck blushed. But Sarah did too.

"I actually hadn't thought about that, Chuck." And then she started a tinkling giggle, and then the giggle swelled into laughter. Chuck frowned at her at first, but that made her laugh harder. Eventually, he was laughing too.

When she finally caught her breath, she reached out and took his hand, her face becoming fully serious all at once. "You have put up with so much from me, some of it, like that, unknown to me, but a lot of it, I admit, known to me. I'm sorry, Chuck." _I really am so sorry_. "Thank you. Thank you for tonight. Thank you for Batumi. Thank you, despite everything, for Burbank."

}o{

All the way home, Sarah vacillated about what to do. She knew if she asked Chuck to come up, she would take him to her bed.

She felt so warm and relaxed and close to him, finally. Close—with no simultaneous, confusing distance. But it had been _one_ date. A second first date. She did not want to screw this up. _Not a helpful phrase, Sarah._ When Chuck parked the car, before he shut off the engine, she turned to him.

"Let's say goodnight here, Chuck, if that's ok. It's late, and I am still tired from our trip."

He nodded, his expression steady, unfazed. "Sure, Sarah. Can I just say that tonight was…terrific? I know we are still finding our way, but…"

"…But this was a good re-commencement, Chuck." She leaned over and took the front of his shirt in her hand, pulling him slowly to her, sinking into his brown eyes. She kissed him. He kissed her. Not like she kissed him when they thought they were going to die—that kiss had been alpha and omega, hello and goodbye, world-creating and world-destroying, until the ages of ages, amen…

No, this kiss was Sarah doing what Ellie had told her to do, _speaking,_ telling things. She told Chuck things she hadn't been able to tell him or only to hint about to him, she told him she was sorry for so much, and hopeful for so much. Chuck told her things too, in response, how sorry he was about Burbank, how committed he was to her, how precious she was to him. When she pulled back gently, she stayed near him, her forehead lightly touching his. They were trembling.

"Wow, Sarah—just wow..."

One side of her mouth turned up in a grin. Chuck could see a thought form in her blue eyes.

"What?"

She brushed her lips against ear again and whispered. "Kiss me like that a couple of more times, Chuck Carmichael, and I promise I will refresh that screen saver." She kissed his ear and quickly got out of the car. As she walked away, she heard Chuck try to start the car while the engine was already running.

* * *

 **A/N2** Failure of verisimilitude update: The Del Campo did not exist in DC in 2008. Sue me. I am writing fiction, not history. Look for the first chapter of the next mission, _His, Hers and Ours_ before too long. How about a wave to me as you leave, a review or favorite or a PM?


	8. Chapter 8: Sameness and Difference

**A/N1** This new mission will take some time, so settle in. We're headed to the mountains.

Thanks, gentle readers, for sticking with me. You folks are great. And remember, the story is free, but the suggested donation is a review or a PM!

Don't own Chuck. Don't own any other tv shows or any movies. No money made.

* * *

 **Turned Tables**

 _The His, Hers and Ours Mission_

* * *

Friday, January 9, 2008  
Washington DC  
2 pm

* * *

CHAPTER 8 Sameness and Difference

* * *

Sarah was standing on the sidewalk outside her apartment building when Chuck pulled up in the car the Agency had assigned them. The car was a dull grey Toyota Camry, dented and smudged and, as cars go, completely forgettable. The afternoon and the Camry were the same color. Chuck's mood had been sinking slowly since the Del Campo.

Chuck hadn't seen Sarah since the end of their date. They'd talked briefly on the phone the next day, yesterday, and the talk had been…fine. But the new mission was here and he could feel Sarah retreating, returning to the Sarah of missions. The easy intimacy at the end of their date was gone.

When they'd talked this morning, and agreed that Chuck would get the car and pick her up, all traces of their date seemed gone. She'd insisted on meeting him outside, despite the frigid cold, and despite his willingness to come up to her apartment. He had the feeling that she did not want him to see her apartment or want him in her apartment—or something. She'd been quick and adamant in refusing his offer.

He was coming to understand that Sarah had compartmentalized the outward spaces in which she lived much as she had compartmentalized her inward space. He realized that if they were going to be partners, he was going to find walls within walls. He would have to win her again and again.

Chuck believed that one reason for Sarah's cooling might be that they were going to be working with another agent on the mission. That agent—Chuck did not know the name, yet—was to be the team lead. Perhaps Sarah was reminding him, and perhaps reminding herself, that they would be watched, and that they needed to prevent personal moments between them. They both knew Graham wanted to end their partnership. Chuck had given Graham new reason to dislike him when he'd forced Graham to keep them together. Chuck knew, and he knew that Sarah knew, that Graham would, if he could, ruin their partnership.

He suspected Graham was micro-manipulating this mission. Chuck had been given the barest of briefings, by a senior analyst, and on the phone. Everything else he needed to know, the analyst had told him, he would learn from the team lead on site. _A call from an analyst_ —Graham putting him in his place.

Before Chuck could get out of the car, Sarah had walked to the rear and tapped her knuckles on the trunk lid. Chuck pulled the release inside the car, and Sarah stowed her suitcase and got in. Her cheeks were flushed from the cold. Chuck wanted to kiss her, but her look as she got in made him bethink that impulse.

He turned away to hide his disappointment.

"Hi, Chuck. Thanks for picking me up."

She let out a long sigh. "I'm sorry. I know. I mean—I understand. I'm sorry about…you know, on the phone. I was happy you called."

She fell silent as he steered the car out of the parking lot. She turned to look at him. "The other night was….terrific. But we need to set it aside now. We have a mission and we need to be focused. Focused. We will be working with another agent, and my guess is that Graham has tasked him with observing us. Graham's not sure why I asked for you to be my partner. I am sure that although he suspects that I…have feelings for you, he also can't quite accept that suspicion."

Chuck pulled into traffic before he responded. "Why?"

"Because Graham reckons that he knows me, that he knows me better than anyone—better than I know myself—and he reckons that you are not a viable…partner…for me. Not my _type_." Sarah smirked for a second then her face became expressionless again. But after a moment, her face softened.

"You and I both know that's not true. But it would be advantageous to keep Graham in the dark. It would be advantageous to keep the team lead in the dark. So, from now until the mission finishes, Chuck, we are _not_ dating. We are just…partners."

Chuck's smile divided his face. "Wait. We're dating? I know we went on _a date_ …."

Sarah shot him a glare. Then she sighed again, and grabbed his hand. She pulled it into her lap and put her other hand around his too. She let herself smile back at him. "Yes, Chuck, we are dating. Exclusively."

Chuck's smile became truly epic. "Well, wow!" He looked around the car and then whispered to her, secretly. "It's about damn time."

Sarah let her smile linger a moment. Then she schooled her features. Sarah let go of his hand.

They crossed the Potomac, heading west.

}o{

"So, we're meeting the team lead in the mountains, right, near some place called Romney, West Virginia?"

Sarah nodded. "Yes. I hope the weather holds. You know the way, right?" Chuck nodded. "Those hairpin roads in the mountains are a nightmare in good weather, much less in bad." She put her hand over her mouth, stifling a yawn. She scooted down into her seat, glancing over at Chuck. "I'm going to sleep a little, if I can. I haven't slept…well…the last couple of nights." She kept her gaze fixed on the road ahead.

"Yeah, me neither…" Chuck added.

He saw her sneak a glance at him out of the corner of her eye, and saw her fight off a smile of understanding as her flush returned, but not from the cold. She turned toward the passenger window and closed her eyes.

}o{

Sarah woke up later, as they were nearing their destination. The strange motion of the car woke her—fast, slow, turn, turn, turn, slow, fast, slow, turn, turn, turn. The car was climbing all the while. When she roused herself enough to look out the window, she saw that they were winding into the mountains along a road that was plotted, evidently, by goats. She felt a little queasy, the road forcing the car into a motion reminiscent of being inside a boat in rough waters.

She pushed herself up, since she had slumped in her sleep, and as she got a better look, she could see that snow was spitting from the sky. A patchy, dense fog was hanging over the mountains, extending down to the road in places, and making driving even more hazardous.

Chuck was attending to the road, but he saw her straighten in her seat. "Crazy drive," he said, laughing without much real amusement. Sarah nodded, the landscape around her dark and foggy enough to make her almost unsure she was awake and not still adrift in a dreamscape.

She watched the road go by out the window. Trailers, ramshackle houses, and rotting barns, all sagging beneath the weight of the mountains. _Twin Peaks_ meets _Deliverance_.

She smiled inwardly at herself. Too much TV and too many movies with Chuck in Burbank. Now, like him, although not nearly fluent, she thought in the shows and movies, like pop culture was a new language. She was tempted to call him Agent Cooper, but fought the temptation back. Still, the thought amused her.

"How much longer, Chuck?"

"We passed through Romney. That took about 45 seconds ten minutes ago. Oldest city in West Virginia, the sign said. The location for the meet is about fifteen or twenty minutes away, off, I hate to say, the main road." His eyes got big and hers did too. What would a back road be like given the main road?

Chuck smirked at her. "Did you by any chance pack a banjo? Or maybe stuff Ned Beatty into your suitcase?" She punched his arm. "Ow!"

When they got to the location for the meet with the team leader, snow was falling in good earnest. They pulled onto a muddy driveway that snaked through trees and led to a rough gravel lot. The lot lapped around a large rectangular building. A sign in front of the building, almost unreadable, said _Overcoming Life Church_. Evidently, life overcame the church, because the building's condition matched the sign's. No one worshipped there anymore. The windows were boarded shut. Paint was peeling and it looked like holes in the building had been patched willy-nilly, sometimes with plywood sheets, sometimes with old sheets of corrugated tin. Nonetheless, a light was on inside; it peeked out from between the boards on the windows.

Chuck let out a low whistle as he got out of the car and Sarah shot him a questioning look. Chuck asked, "What is it with churches?"

She shrugged, not understanding.

"In Batumi, we were near that Orthodox church and now… _this_." Chuck pointed at the sign.

Sarah shrugged again, now understanding him but having no answer.

When she said nothing, she heard Chuck mutter something about _coincidence_ and then something about the _spy gods_ , but she couldn't make it out. She reached into her bag and grabbed the handle of her pistol. When Chuck looked at her again, she gestured toward the door with her head. Chuck nodded.

"Sarah, what is the team leader's name?" He asked this just as he knocked softly on the door.

"You don't know?" Surprise was in her voice.

Chuck shook his head. "No, the analyst who briefed me never said."

Sarah's brow furrowed. She heard a noise from inside the building and she readied herself. "His name is Chris Parks."

Chuck's eyes bulged. "His?"

The door opened and standing in it, framed in the weak light from inside, was a woman maybe two or three years older than Chuck or Sarah. She glanced at them and then stepped aside. "Evening, Agents." Sarah relaxed her hold on her pistol and walked in. Chuck was stuck in place. The woman turned to him and grinned. "C'mon, Carmichael, get in out of the snow."

Sarah could hear undisguised affection in the woman's voice. _What the hell?_

When Chuck finally entered, the woman shut the door. She held out her hand to Sarah, a little hesitantly. "Hi, Agent Chris Parks. Always good to meet a…legend, Agent Walker." Sarah felt like she had shown up at potluck empty-handed. She shook with Parks. Then, Parks closed the distance between herself and Chuck, and she wrapped him in a warm, enthusiastic hug. Chuck's shock seemed to be wearing off, and he returned the hug.

Parks stepped back and took Chuck's hands in hers. She took stock of him, running her gaze up and down his lanky form. Then she reached up and mussed his hair, fondly. Sarah felt herself stiffen.

Chuck glanced nervously at Sarah. Then he turned his attention back to Parks. "Chris! It's been a while. You are looking…well."

"Thanks! It's been way, way too long, Chuck. I've been on assignments overseas. Back in DC usually only for a few hours or a day. I would have tried to find you, if I had any extra time. I've missed you."

Chuck let that pass without comment. "What are you doing in the hills of West Virginia?"

Parks' frowned. "Well, as you know, work has me here." Parks turned to Sarah and motioned for them both to follow her.

They walked down the center aisle of the church, on indoor-outdoor carpet so badly stained that it was hard to know what color it had been originally. The old pulpit had been scooted out of the middle of the floor in the front, and replaced by a large, fold-out table, covered in maps and files and Styrofoam take-out boxes. The lone light in the sanctuary was a bulb hanging from a wire over the table, giving off enough illumination for the table but not enough to chase away the gloom in the rest of the room. Heat was coming from somewhere—so there was at least that.

Parks opened two folding chairs and put them beside the table, then she walked around and sat down in one on the other side. Chuck sat down and so did Sarah.

Sarah could now get a better look at Parks. She was Asian American, very attractive. Her hair was dark brown and cut short, almost a boy cut, but it did not make her seem remotely like a boy. She was graceful, her movements economical and precise. She was thin, neither short nor tall. She had on a sweater, unbuttoned, over a green blouse and dark navy slacks. As she sat down, she pulled the sweater around her, holding it closed with her hands, and taking a moment to close her eyes. Beneath the naked bulb, Sarah could see that Parks' eyes were rung in dark circles. Exhausted. Sarah noticed that Chuck noticed—he seemed clearly concerned about Parks.

Parks eventually opened her eyes, but she kept her sweater closed. "So, I was in Europe, working to hunt down the final few major players from Fulcrum. Larkin's confession, " her eyes flicked up at Sarah, "led us to most of them and allowed us to capture many easily. But a few managed to get away. The most important of them is an American who had been living in Austria. His name is Meeks Lawton. I chased him across Europe, but he found his way back to the States. He has family here—distant family, but folks around here take family, blood, seriously. His 'uncle', Turner Coombs-I believe he is just a cousin, but he is several years older than Lawton—runs a militia compound several miles from here. The militia guys call themselves "Free Live Free" and they hate virtually everything the US government does.

"But we are not here for them. We are here for Lawton. Unfortunately, they make getting at Lawton a problem, because Coombs has let Lawton hole up in the compound. Now, Coombs is serious about family, he's willing to let Lawton hole up there, and perhaps he would even to fight to keep him there, but the two men are not buddies, and word from inside the compound is that Lawton is questioning Coombs around the other men, and that Coombs is resentful." Parks frowned, then grinned caustically. "Trouble in paradise, I guess."

Parks paused for a moment and pushed some papers and files around on the desk, uncovering a map of the area. She pointed to a spot marked in red. "The compound is here. It is surrounded by a chain-link fence, fully intact, so far as I can tell, and topped with razor wire." She saw Chuck flinch. "Yeah, these guys are serious about their…pastime. Anyway, there is one main entrance, always guarded. There are four buildings in the compound, an HQ, two bunkhouses, a bathroom/shower house, and an armory. At any given time, there are at least five armed men in the compound. Three guards at the gate," she picked up a satellite photo that showed the compound and pointed to the gate, "one in this tower, and one in the armory. Lawton is bunking in the HQ, with Coombs. Men are in and out all the time. As you might guess, weekends are when the compound is most full. The crowd thins out during the week. Men take turns on guard duty.

"I want you to familiarize yourself with the place—but we are hoping to avoid having to infiltrate it."

"As you might guess, most of the men in the group are pretenders, untrained in combat and unskilled with weapons. That doesn't mean that they aren't dangerous, but the term 'militia' here should not mislead you. Coombs, however, was a green beret before a dishonorable discharge. His record shows that he is a genuine badass. And seriously unbalanced. Lawton is a killer too, in fact, he made his name as a contract killer. So, the two of them are formidable and should not be taken lightly."

Sarah spoke up. "Agent Parks, I noticed you kept saying 'men'. Are there women in the compound?"

"Call me Chris. No, women are not allowed to be members of Free Live Free, but they are allowed in the compound. Wives and girlfriends are often there on the weekends, sometimes a carload of…professionals…will visit. Those two things don't normally happen on the same weekends." Parks smiled grimly.

"This is a bunch of disaffected men playing soldier. It' a midlife crisis boys' club. But the guns and the ammo are real, and, as I said, Coombs and Lawton are seriously dangerous."

"So, Chris," Chuck asked, "what are we here to do?"

"Well, Chuck, you and Sarah are here to help me get Lawton. Chuck, Coombs won't do any serious dealing with a woman, but I believe that, for the right price, he'd be willing to sell out his nephew, Lawton. But the right price is going to involve weapons, and not just cash. You will pose as my arms dealer. I have already gotten to Coombs, met with him a couple of times. I have gotten him interested in what I may be able to supply him. I haven't simply told him the cost, but I have hinted at it. I don't want to tell him that we want Lawton until he's seen the weapons. We'd like him to deliver Lawton to us.

"As small CIA team will arrive tomorrow with the weapons. The meeting with Coombs is for tomorrow night. I need you to be the one to run the show, offer the weapons, and explain the price. By the way," she added, smirking, "to keep Coombs from getting…notions, I've also led him to believe that you and I are involved. So, he'll need to get the right vibe from us."

Sarah listened intently, her heart sinking as she heard it all. "And what about me?"

Parks turned to Sarah. "I need you to keep us safe. You will take control of the CIA team and be our backup. If anything happens, we'll be relying on you to keep us alive. There's no chance that Coombs comes to the meeting without a squad of men. Who knows what might happen. But the potential cost in lives of storming the compound, and the inevitable news coverage it would create, by themselves make this the better plan, not to mention that we want to keep the capture of Lawton secret, if possible."

"Sure," Sarah said, "but you say that like it is particularly important where Lawton is concerned."

"That's because I believe it is. I have gathered intel that strongly suggests that Fulcrum was the outer edge, if you want to put it that way, of a far more powerful, far more secret and a better-positioned group known as the Ring. Lawton is somehow at the intersection of Fulcrum and the Ring. If we can take him alive, we may be able to begin to fight against the Ring, or at least to better understand what the group is and what it wants. We need time with Lawton without anyone else—without the Ring—knowing it. That way, we get a head start on them. If they know we have them, they will pull back and disappear, at least everything Lawton might know about will be gone, everyone he knows about will be dead."

Parks handed them both copies of files on Lawton and Coombs and they took the files and worked through the information together. Sarah noticed Parks glancing at Chuck often, seemingly hoping to find him glancing at her. But if Chuck had done so, Sarah hadn't seen it, and, judging by Parks' slightly hurt look as the meeting neared its end, she thought Chuck had disappointed Parks' hopes. Still, there was a story here, obviously, and one that she wanted…no, needed…to know. Each of Parks' glances had been like a needle to Sarah, a causing a pinprick of annoyance, and making it hard to concentrate. Chuck had seemed to be intent on the plan and the files, and the only glances she had seen from him had been at her, at Sarah. She had kept her face blank; Parks did not seem to suspect that there was anything between them, and that suited Sarah. At least, she thought it did. She was trying to sort that out when Parks' made a final comment.

"So, we meet back here tomorrow evening at 4 pm. We meet with Coombs at an abandoned coal mine a little further up the mountain. We have satellite coverage on it, and drone coverage during the night. It is unlikely he can do anything there to surprise us. The only problem will be Coombs himself and the men he brings with him. Chuck," she said, smiling at him and handing him another file, "here's your cover. Learn it. There's not much. The CIA constructed a very minimal internet presence for you and I have not yet given Coombs your name, Roy Sauer. I will text it to him tonight. He will be able to find out a bit about you before we meet likely, but nothing that is not in the file."

Parks gathered up a stack of maps and photos and put them in a large manila envelope. She handed it to Sarah. "So you can figure out how to keep us alive." She then handed Sarah a piece of paper with an address, and a key ring. "The address and the keys to the safe house for you and Chuck to use. You may want to grab some supplies—food, drink. Don't worry, I made sure there were separate bedrooms. "

 _Yes, that I can believe. Although it is what I want, right? Right? Mission: so, two beds?_

Parks got her coat. It had been hanging from the back of her folding chair. "My car's in the back. Agent Walker, nice to meet you." She shook Sarah's hand again. "Chuck, it's done me good to see you again. I was excited when Graham told me he'd assigned you to me." Sarah felt an ice cube form in her belly. Parks hugged Chuck and then she turned off the light. She made her way to the back door. Chuck followed Sarah to the front. As they stepped outside, they found that the snow was beginning to stick.

Chuck stopped and looked again at the sign. " _Overcoming Life Church_. I mean, I get it. I know what they meant. But was that the best way to say it?"

She shook her head at him. They were on a mission and he was worried about the ambiguous name of a defunct church. _He makes it impossible for me to focus._ Sarah asked Chuck for the keys and he threw them to her. She got in the car and started the engine, turning on the heater. Chuck finally got in. "It's weird, huh?"

"What, Chuck? The sign?"

"No, the snow."

Sarah peered through the windshield, watching it white the ground. "I don't know. Looks like snow to me."

"Yeah, but a few days ago, we were in snow in subtropical Georgia. Palm trees with icicles. Now we're in snow in the mountains of West Virginia. No palm trees in sight. Plenty of pines with icicles, though." She stared at him for a moment, in amused and dismayed disbelief. Then he started singing John Denver's anthem to West Virginia, "Take Me Home, Country Roads" _._

She shook her head as he crooned away beside her in the car. The muddy driveway of the church was freezing solid as she steered them from toward the road.

Sarah wanted the story on Parks. But she found that she felt warm all over, ahead of anything the car's heater was doing. Chuck kept singing. She smiled despite herself and headed for the safe house.

}o{

It took them a little while to get to the safe house. The roads were beginning to get slippery. They stopped at a Food Lion grocery store and picked up some things to have for dinner and for breakfast. They found the safe house, a nondescript white house on the edge of Romney, set back off the street on a large lot. They pulled all the way up the driveway, parking right next to the house. Sarah kept the car keys but handed Chuck the house keys. He got out and opened the door, then came back and grabbed the two bags of groceries. Sarah popped the trunk and grabbed both suitcases and wheeled them in.

Chuck had turned on the lights. Someone, Parks presumably, had turned set the thermostat up, so that the house was comfortable. It was an old place, presumably decorated in the 1970's, given the ancient appointments and regrettable color schemes. Still, it was snug and clean. Chuck had put the groceries on the small table in the kitchen and had wandered into the house. Sarah fell behind, fussing with a wheel of her suitcase that had a stone lodged in it. When it was free, she went through the formal dining room next to the kitchen, and into the living room. She then took the narrow hallway that led further into the house. Down it, there was a bathroom, and immediately across from it, a bedroom. At the end of the hall, on the same side as the bathroom, was a much smaller bedroom. Chuck was standing in it, taking off his jacket.

"What're you doing, Chuck?"

"I figured I'd take this room. You can have the other." She thought about them sharing the other room. She'd been thinking about him and about her and about a bed since their date had ended. She'd dreamed it in Batumi, it was now even more urgent after the date. She forced herself to turn around.

"Ok, Chuck." She glanced back over her shoulder and saw that he'd taken off his shoulder holster with the tranq pistol, and was seated on the bed, taking off his shoes.

Sarah went into her room and took off her jacket and kicked off her shoes, seeing Chuck go past her door. She stretched and took a deep breath, then went after Chuck.

He was in the kitchen, putting their few items away, some in the refrigerator and some on the counter. They would not be there long enough to worry about a pantry.

He had purchased what he needed to make chili, and he started working on that. Sarah offered to help. He had her cut up some tomatoes and some onions and some garlic. He opened cans. Soon, the house smelled of cumin and chili powder. Sarah heard her stomach growl. Chuck grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge and handed her one too. They sat down at the little table as the chili simmered on the stove and as snow continued to fall in the darkness.

"So, Chris Parks," Chuck offered, "a she, not a he, as you now know." Chuck's tone was light.

"And a she that you obviously used to know." Sarah could not match the lightness of Chuck's tone. Hers was weighted.

"Yeah. Ah. Right. I did. You remember that I mentioned dating a couple of agents? She was one. We met at the Farm, near the end of my training. She…taught my Weapons class.

"She's kind of like you with knives, only with guns. Anyway…I was having trouble in the class. Not because of the…um…mechanical stuff. I could handle a gun, memorize its parts, assemble and disassemble it, no problem. In fact, I was better at that part of it than anyone else in the class."

He smiled at her, displaying his large hands and long fingers, "I'm good with my hands." Luckily, his glance at his own hands kept him from realizing that Sarah had licked her lips as she glanced at them. "But the whole aim-it-at-a-person part of it I was not so good at. Even in target practice, I couldn't stop thinking about aiming at a real person, shooting someone, about a bullet tearing flesh and shattering bone…I would've probably washed out, but she worked with me outside of class. Got me to treat the gun as a tool and to take the target to be nothing but a target, a piece of paper with concentric circles. If I kept myself focused like that, I was good—good enough to pass anyway. She's actually the person who first suggested tranq guns to me."

Chuck stood up and went to the stove. He stirred the chili. "Getting there."

"And…" Sarah offered, to get Chuck to continue. She took another sip of her water.

"And I guess you could say we became friends. Obviously, at the Farm, she was my instructor, so…fraternizing was off the table." He shrugged a shoulder.

"I knew she was interested in more. But we never talked about it." He looked at Sarah, his look flat. She glanced away.

"I finished, and we said goodbye and I thought that was that. I heard she was going back in the field. But a few months later, we ran into each other at Langley. She…asked me out, and I said yes. The thing was, she told me on the first date that she was going back to Europe soon and would be gone a while. I could tell she…well, she really liked me. Still, there was no chance she wasn't leaving for Europe. Maybe she thought we could have a long-distance spy thing, seeing each other in DC when we were both there, maybe meeting up somewhere between missions. But I didn't want that. If I'm going to be involved, I want to be involved. I can't…I won't…treat a woman I care about as a…hobby. She wanted us to…sleep together, but I couldn't. It wouldn't have been real, or…it wouldn't have been what I really wanted. I liked her. I just don't do one-night stands, and that is all it would have been, all it could have been."

Sarah felt her face get warm. One-night stands were really all she knew, all she had thought she was allowed. Until Bryce...but even with Bryce. Her entire…relationship...with Bryce was a serial one-night stand. _How did I not realize that?_ A one-night stand that kept repeating itself but never changed its essential nature. No wonder she never felt special. She'd half fallen into, half chosen a relationship designed to prevent such feelings.

Chuck had gone on and Sarah caught back up. "…I don't know, Sarah, but if sex doesn't involve hope for the two people involved, if it isn't…aimed at something, part of movement toward something, part of a life two people are building…isn't it just a weirdly pleasurable sneeze?"

"Oh, God, Chuck. Thanks so much for that image." She made a face.

He shrugged both shoulders in apology. "Well, sneezes aren't bad. They have their place, I guess. They just aren't bearers of much meaning, you know….Anyway, Chris wanted to, but I said no. It hurt her, I'm pretty sure, but she accepted it. We just trailed off after that, though, and in a few weeks, she was gone."

Chuck turned and hunted through the cupboards for a couple of bowls. He found two, along with a couple of spoons and napkins. He heaped chili into each bowl and sat the bowls down at the table. Then he handed her a spoon and a napkin. The spicy warmth of the chili was a wonderful contrast with the dull cold all around them. Sarah closed her eyes, leaned down and inhaled slowly, a slight hum of anticipation escaped her. She might not have noticed, except for Chuck's audible gulp. She felt her face grow warm again. Chuck did not make eye contact with her; he began to eat his chili. She began to eat hers. It was good. Sitting there with Chuck was good. _I'm good_.

}o{

Sarah walked as softly as she could into the hallway. She was the best spy in the CIA—she could walk so softly no one could hear her. She went down the hallway and stood in front of the door. It was partially open. She put her hand out slowly and pressed against the door softly. She felt relief when it started to swing open silently. She tiptoed into the bedroom.

Chuck was asleep under the covers, his breathing deep and regular. Sarah could not stop tossing and turning. Their first mission, their date, and now this mission, and now Parks. Her head was spinning. She knew Chuck had a hard time falling asleep too; she had heard him for a long time after the movie ended, and they switched off the TV and headed to bed. They had both struggled as they watched the movie, a wonderful Cary Grant film she loved: _The Awful Truth_. But the awful truth was that she wanted to attack Chuck there on the couch. After all, they were dating, exclusively. She had said so and he agreed. But they were on a mission. She had to keep it professional. When she had been with Bryce, she could hardly ever find the personal in the professional. For Bryce, there was no personal, not really. When she was with Chuck, she had a hard time finding the professional in the personal. For Chuck, they really weren't distinct.

Chuck Bartowski had been the same when on a mission and when not on a mission. It turned out ( _Why should I be surprised?_ ) that Chuck Carmichael was the same when on a mission and when not on a mission. Chuck was always Chuck. Sarah was never Sarah. But she was especially not-Sarah on missions. On missions, if she was undercover, she was the cover, nothing more. If she was not undercover, she was no one in particular, nothing but a woman-shaped weapon. At least that is how it had been before Chuck, before he discovered Sarah, and she was able to discover Sarah as well. She wanted him so much. She wanted him to discover Sarah while making love to her, she wanted to discover him and discover herself while making love to him.

 _Undercover. Discover._ _How had I missed the word 'cover' that was part of both? How had I missed the fact that they were effectively opposites, antonyms?_

 _The Awful Truth_ had made things worse. In the final scene of the movie, Cary Grant's character, Jerry, is desperate to reunite with Irene Dunne's character, his soon-to-be ex-wife, Lucy, and to join her in bed. (Their divorce is due to become final at midnight.) He keeps finding reasons to come to her room. Finally, Jerry tries to explain, to somehow bring them together. She and Chuck were both rapt in the scene.

Jerry: In a half an hour, we'll no longer be Mr. and Mrs. Funny, isn't it.  
Lucy: Yes, it's funny that everything's the way it is on account of the way you feel.  
Jerry: Huh?  
Lucy: Well, what I mean is, if you didn't feel the way you do, things wouldn't be the way they are, would they? I mean, things could be the same if things were different.  
Jerry: But things are the way you made them.  
Lucy: Oh, no. No, things are the way you think I made them. I didn't make them that way at all. Things are just the same as they always were, only, you're the same as you were, too, so I guess things will never be the same again.

The heat of desire between Jerry and Lucy, and the layers of misunderstanding and deception between them, struck Chuck and Sarah too close to home. It all became way too much when Jerry and Lucy tossed the misunderstandings and deception aside and became a couple (again).

Sara felt The air in the living room became heavy and charged. She needed to get away from Chuck or they would...couple. Sarah stood up and announced, her voice tight, that she was tired and going to bed. Chuck coughed out his agreement.

That had been the beginning of their mutual and mutually-directed sleeplessness. Chuck had obviously finally found his way to sleep, but Sarah couldn't.

So now she was standing in his room, watching him sleep. Every part of her, some more noticeably than others, but every part, wanted to join him in his bed. She stood in indecision. Then she did what she came to do. She found the long sleeve _Firefly_ T-shirt Chuck had worn that day, and she crept from his room with her prize.

Of course, the blue ribbon was in his bed, was him, but she stole away with the red ribbon. It would have to do. They were on a mission. _On a mission._ They needed to keep Parks and Graham in the dark.

But It was not just her burning desire for Chuck that was troubling her. It was also the creep of self-loathing.

 _Hi, I'm Sarah. And this is my constant companion, self-loathing. Isn't she great?_

Sarah's focus on missions was tunnel vision on mission objectives. It was also a studied ignorance of the self-loathing her missions caused. Each mission intensified her self-loathing, but each mission distracted her from it. But then the mission ended, and the intensified self-loathing screamed for her attention. To keep from attending to it, she took another mission, which intensified her self-loathing and…

And a never-ending spiral of misery. Until Batumi. Batumi had caused her to feel lots of things, and the self-loathing had intensified at the beginning but it was weakened as she left. She hadn't hated herself more after Batumi. She certainly hadn't hated herself during the date with Chuck. But then the new mission came…

 _It's not tunnel vision—it's seeing the world through a scope. I've seen so much of my life through a scope. No wonder it's linked to self-loathing._

When she got back to her room, she slipped her pajama top off and replaced it with Chuck's shirt. She could, as she knew she would, smell him on it. She got back in bed and pulled the covers around her. She hugged the shirt, hugging Chuck _in_ _absentia_ and in so doing, hugging herself. The creeping self-loathing vanished. The T-shirt, the feeling it gave her of Chuck holding her, was powerful enough to do that. And to cool her desire for him a little.

She felt good again. Calmer. Safe. Whole. She finally slept.

}o{

When Sarah woke up, she heard soft laughter. She thought she still must be on the edge of dreams, but then she heard it again. Soft, but real. A woman's laughter.

Sarah got up quickly and opened her door. She walked silently down the hallway and into the living room. She stopped. She heard Chuck's voice and then a woman's. Chris Park's voice.

"So, Chuck. _Sarah Walker_? How'd you end up with _her_ as a partner? I thought she was a lone wolf, the Ice Queen? You two working together is _bizarre_. The nicest spy on the planet teamed with the deadliest, the emo-spy and the emotionless assassin. I can see that she's as beautiful as rumored, but the body count, Chuck. How can you look at her and not see a movable mass grave? I mean I'm a bit of a fangirl, yeah, but I'd be terrified to be her partner, frankly. One mission like this, cool, meet a legend, collect the anecdote, get the hell away from her. But being with her all the time? Sleeping across the hallway from her? Tell me you are not afraid?"

And Sarah's self-loathing threatened to creep back.

She waited for Chuck to answer. His pause was eternal.

"I am _not_ afraid of her. Look, no details, but I've been…working with her for months now. She's everything I could want…in a partner. She's done what she's done. I'm not disputing…facts of hard record. But everyone has a story, Chris, and you don't know hers. Are you going to tell me that you're a stranger to a sniper rifle?"

Sarah heard the other woman clear her throat. Other than that, Parks didn't answer. "I thought so. So, what's the difference you see between you and…Agent Walker? Are you any less an assassin for having done it once, twice, a few times, than someone else who's done it many? Aren't you the same? Don't you have a story about what you've done, Chris? Do you think you're a cold-blooded killer, that that's all you are?"

Silence.

Then Sarah heard Chuck's surprisingly hard tone soften. She could imagine the look in his brown eyes. And she suddenly knew he was talking _to her_. Not that he knew she was listening to the conversation—but she knew his heart was full of her.

"Look, Chris, we're all dragging shit forward. We're all covered up in regrets, but if we're alive, our stories aren't told. What we are—whether we're good, bad—isn't decided so long as we're still breathing. I'm not afraid of Sarah Walker. I trust her," Sarah heard his voice break and her heart did a little in response, "I have for a long time now. I've never regretted that. She's my partner and I'm lucky to…have her."

She was so moved by Chuck's words that, after letting a few seconds pass, she walked into the kitchen. She wanted to see Chuck, to look into his eyes. To let him know how he made her feel about herself.

Chuck and Parks looked up at her at the same time as she walked in. Chuck's eyes bulged. Parks' eyes swept from the T-shirt Sarah forgot she was wearing to Chuck, and back again.

 _Shit_.

* * *

 **A/N2** Ah, love. It can make fools of us all, even super spies. Thanks for reading. If you like the story, spread the word. And drop me a line. Look for more of the mission soon.


	9. Chapter 9: Don't Let's Start

**A/N1** As I said last chapter, this mission will take a while. Lots of lights flashing on the control panel. Calibrations, calibrations.

I am very pleased with the number of folks out there reading this tale. I know it is...offbeat.

It really is true that reviews and PMs are important for the author. Of course, it is nice to be told complimentary things (when that happens), but it is mainly important to keep the writer from feeling like he or she is writing into the void. Any word of appreciation, encouragement or acknowledgment matters.

The chapter title here is another borrowing from They Might Be Giants, one of my favorite songs of all time, an upbeat downbeat number, "Don't Let's Start". I still remember where I was the first time I heard it. (In Rochester, New York.) I've been working on it for a solo show I will play soon. Should be a fun song to do live.

 _F-word alert._ Not my usual thing. Once, below.

Don't own Chuck. Don't own West Virginia (even if I was born there). Never hunted coyotes.

* * *

 **Turned Tables**

 _The His, Hers and Ours Mission_

* * *

Saturday, January 10, 2008  
Romney, West Virginia  
CIA Safe House  
7:27 am

* * *

CHAPTER 9 Don't Let's Start

* * *

Parks' glance—from the T-shirt Sarah was wearing to Chuck and back again—was followed by a deep frown. She turned to Chuck and glared at him. Chuck, who hadn't realized his shirt was missing, was at a loss. Lost. He looked at Parks and then at Sarah, helplessly.

 _This is why spies don't fall in love_.

Sarah heard Carina's voice like a bell in her head. She could imagine how much Carina would be enjoying this scene. Sarah glanced at Chuck. She felt a surge of anger toward him for… _for what?_ Because she could fall in love with him? Because she had fallen in love with him? _I love you, Chuck_.

Sarah turned to the counter. Someone, Chuck probably, had made coffee and there was still half a pot. A clean cup was waiting on the counter. She filled it and then turned back around.

Chuck's eyes were smiling at her despite his alarm. Parks continued to frown. Sarah noticed that Parks' cup of coffee was nearly empty. She turned and grabbed the pot again, then stepped toward Parks holding it out. "May I warm that up for you?"

Parks flinched. She stared at the pot of hot coffee in Sarah's hand. Finally, she lifted her eyes to Sarah's face and gave an uncertain nod. As Sarah poured Parks more coffee, she looked at Chuck. "Hey, Chuck, can you give us girls a few minutes to chat? Agent Parks seems to be a _Firefly_ fan too. You know how we _fangirls_ like to talk." Sarah returned the pot to the coffee maker but her gaze remained on Chuck.

Chuck kept his head still, but his eyes traveled from Sarah's face to Parks'. He drummed his fingers on the table for a second, the voice of his reluctance, and then he got up with his coffee and headed back toward his room. Sarah waited until she heard his door close, then she sat down across from Parks, and took a sip of the coffee.

Parks was clearly unsure about what was happening. Sarah drew the silence out a little longer, sipping more of her coffee. She put the cup down. "So, _Chris_ , you and Chuck were an item, once, right?"

Parks hadn't expected to be the one on the receiving end of questions. Sarah could see her readjusting mentally.

"Yes, _Sarah_ , I guess you could say that. But I don't know that we were an item quite like…that." She gestured at the _Firefly_ T-shirt. Sarah looked down at it and then back up to Parks. Parks continued. "I suppose you've talked to Chuck, and that means you know…how things were between us. Or weren't." To Sarah's surprise, Parks' edginess decreased. She smiled at Sarah ruefully. "We were…almost…an item. We dated. I met him at the Farm—did he tell you? Yes?—he was in my Weapons class. At first, I honestly thought he was a test, a plant or fake put into the system by Graham or someone, meant to test the system, meant to test the teachers. I mean, there was no way _that guy_ was going to be a spy. It had to be some test or trick. But then, he kept…succeeding. Not always as well at some things as others, but he kept succeeding, even though he never once seemed like he was becoming a spy. He seemed like a good guy, a great guy, who'd mistakenly taken a vacation at spy camp."

Parks' smiled warmly to herself, forgetting for a moment that Sarah was watching, listening. After a moment, she shook her head, refocusing.

"He struggled in my class. He couldn't stomach the thought of shooting someone. We worked through it and after a while I knew he wasn't a test or a trick, he was an…anomaly. A singularity. When I realized he was Frost's son—that wasn't common knowledge around the Farm—I began to get it. He had the all the raw material, the instincts, God knows he was smart enough, even if his heart was…well, I was going to say _not in it_ , but maybe the right thing to say is that his heart _was too much in it._ He's a spy with a heart. I got caught…in that heart. I fell for him hard while we were at the Farm. But I couldn't act on my feelings. I couldn't tell him…how much I felt."

Sarah felt a rush of sympathy for Parks. Sarah knew how this part of the story went. She was still living it.

"I finished my rotation at the Farm and got sent to Europe—where I've done most of my fieldwork. But the whole time I was there, I kept thinking of Chuck. How different I felt around him. How much I missed that. When I got back to DC, I made sure we ran into each other in Langley and I asked him out. He said yes."

Sarah could hear the recaptured excitement in Parks' voice. And then she heard the excitement diminish.

"It was great. But, you know, we were both spies. The job is the job. It became clear to me that Chuck was going to have to see a future for us if we were going to be…together. I thought we could have one, you know, the kind field agents have." She waved her hand in the air. "Together in DC when our schedules allowed, together other places as opportunities arose, and the rest of the time…well, other people as necessary, if necessary." Parks shrugged. "You know, the spy life."

Sarah knew.

Chuck had withheld that part of the story last night. No doubt he felt it wasn't right for him to share it. But Sarah knew him. It was most on his mind when he told her about Parks. It wasn't the distance and the intermittent time together, although those were problems. It was that 'other people as necessary, if necessary' clause. It wasn't for Chuck. It'd never really been for Sarah, either, although she'd thought it was another rule of the spy life, a corollary of _Spies don't fall in love._ She'd hoped that what she had with Bryce was her escape from all of that. The empty pressure of it. But no: whatever the right thing to say about her relationship with Bryce, they'd never broken the rule that _Spies don't fall in love_. Maybe they thought they had. They hadn't invoked the 'other people as necessary, if necessary' clause. Sarah had been faithful to Bryce the whole time they were together; she'd never even been tempted to be anything else. As far as she knew, Bryce had been faithful to her. But they hadn't fallen in love. She knew she hadn't. Chuck had proved that to her. Her feelings for him had.

Sarah got up and carried her coffee to the window. Three or four inches of snow had accumulated during the night, but it was no longer snowing. The sky was a grey so pale it and the snow blended imperceptibly in the distance. The earth and sky one discouraging color.

Parks had fallen silent. Sarah turned around and Parks shrugged bitterly. "Goddamned spy life." She turned away from Sarah, hiding the tears in her eyes.

"Do you ever think about a different kind of life, Chris? You know, a husband, kids maybe, a job without a gun?"

Parks' chuckled damply. "Yeah, Sarah. I thought about it a lot when things with Chuck ended. But back then, I had given up so much for the life, done…so many things, that I couldn't really see myself in the scenes I imagined. If I had ever managed it, I would have been on a plane to him in a moment. I would have dragged him to my bed and I would never have let him out of it, and I would never have left it—well, you know, metaphorically. But as literally as possible too." Parks' quiet chuckle was full of emotion.

"Frankly, Sarah," Parks continued after swallowing hard, and after a significant look at Chuck's T-shirt, "I have been able to manage that lately, to imagine myself in those scenes. With Chuck. A few weeks ago, in a meeting with Graham, I asked about Chuck. I guess Graham noticed and filed that away. When I put in the request for help a few days ago, he…well, he sent Chuck. And you."

"What about you, Sarah? Do _you_ ever think about a different kind of life?" Parks was genuinely curious. She seemed boggled by the fact that Sarah had been the one to pose question initially.

Sarah sat back down. "Did you ever see that old Western, _The Gunfighter_? Gregory Peck?" Parks' shook her head. "Well, Chuck showed me that movie once. I like old movies, he likes Westerns, so we sometimes compromised on old Westerns. Um…when we had time off. Anyway, it is a sad film. Peck plays a gunfighter. 'His only friend was his gun'. That's what one of the posters for the film said. I saw it online." Parks' gaze interlocked for a second with Sarah's. The two women understood that line in a way few could.

"Anyway, Peck's character, Johnny Ringo, is a gunfighter who wants to change his ways. He has a wife he hasn't seen for eight years and a son he has never seen. He goes to the town where she lives. He asks his wife, Peggy, to come with him to California, where they can start over, where his reputation won't chase them. She tells him that if he can go a year without falling back in his old ways, she will go. But he waits too long for the chance to talk to her. He ends up getting killed at the end, shot in the back." She paused. "When Chuck showed that to me, I almost couldn't watch it. The message seemed clear: you can't go back, you can't change, you can't be forgiven." Now Sarah's chuckle was damp-and grim.

"That he gets shot in the back is symbolic. His past kills him. Movable mass graves don't get second chances." Parks dropped her head, unable to maintain eye contact with Sarah as she heard her own words.

"But the longer I have been…working with Chuck, the more I believe forgiveness is possible. That change is possible. That even if you can't go back, you don't have to go on as you have. Did you ever meet Chuck's sister, Ellie?" Parks' shook her head. "She's great. She reminded me that we're not on train tracks. The future, my future, is trackless. I don't know if I can imagine myself in those scenes, but I want to be in them. That has to count for something." Sarah tone was prayerful.

"And you want to be in them with Chuck?" Parks' eyes narrowed; she leaned forward without realizing it. The answer to this question mattered to her. It mattered to Sarah too.

 _Spies don't fall in love_.

}o{

Chuck was pacing in his room. Given the size of his room, he was closer to rotating in place than pacing. He felt a little crazy. Sarah was wearing his shirt!

She must have come in and taken it during the night. That thought warmed him, and frustrated him too, since it meant _she_ _had been in his room_. Why hadn't she just climbed into the bed? But now she'd worn the shirt in front of Parks. Sarah, he knew, was a practiced liar, good enough to fool even Parks. What story would she make up? How would he know? Would he screw it up?

Sarah was wearing his shirt.

His phone rang. He looked down at the screen. Shaking his head, he answered. "Hi, Mom."

"Chuck. Are you in West Virginia?" Chuck held the phone out for a moment, staring at it. _Shit_. How did she always know these things?

"Yeah, Mom. 'Almost Heaven'. Why are you calling me when I am on a mission?"

"What? A mother can't call her son?"

"You know, Mom, I may be the only son in the history of the world whose mother had never directly answered a question. Don't you think that's weird?"

"What do you mean, Chuck, 'weird'?"

Chuck hung his head. He tossed the phone on the bed. Then he thought better of it and picked it up. "Talk to me, Mom."

"Two things, Chuck. One: Meeks Lawton, the man you are after, is far more dangerous than I think even Agent Parks knows. Be very careful. Don't turn your back on him. Don't make assumptions. He kills more easily and more naturally than he breathes, Chuck."

"Ok, Mom. Good to know. Really. Good to know. And two?"

"Two: Ellie tells me that you went on a date with Agent Walker." Frost did not wait for a reaction. "Has Agent Walker told you that I paid her a visit before the two of you went to Batumi."

"Um. No. Mom, she hasn't. Was she supposed to?"

Silence.

"No, I suppose not. I just thought she might have mentioned it. We had a heart-to-heart. I let her know how…apprehensive…I am about the two of you as partners…or anything else."

"You know, Mom, I am a big boy spy now. Got my own gun."

"Tranq gun, Chuck."

"Yeah, well, still, I can make my own decisions."

"Yes, you can make your own decisions, but that doesn't mean they will be good ones." An edge had crept into her voice. Chuck knew it well. A lecture—or more like a _sitrep_ —was threatening. His childhood had been full of them. Not mother-son chats. Sitreps. Mission briefings. Debriefings.

"True, Mom. But still, you can't make the decisions for me."

"No, Charles, I can't. But I am here to help. Look, Agent Walker—Sarah—is a beautiful woman. She's very intelligent. I understand what you see in her. I worry about what you don't see in her, or won't. She is a spy, a particularly successful sort of spy. You give up parts of yourself for that sort of success, parts that you cannot reclaim."

Chuck had now had a version of this conversation twice on only one cup of coffee. He was getting annoyed.

"Mom, _you_ should know."

Prolonged silence. When she spoke, the edge was gone from her voice. She sounded frail, maybe even remorseful. "I do know. You grew up with an…incomplete mother and an absent father…I don't want you to fall in love with someone who isn't and can't be made whole."

"Let's leave Dad out of this, Mom, ok? And yes, you were…less…Look, Mom, I love you. I know you love me. Don't let's start on the other stuff. You don't understand what I see in her, Mom. And you think I am blind. But I have seen her file, Mom. All of it. Graham showed it to me before I went to Burbank."

"Right, Chuck, but you saw the damage she has done to others. Not the damage that has been done to her by others—and by herself. You've told her how you feel about her. Has she told you? Has she said _anything_? Is she capable of expressing feelings?"

Chuck squeezed his eyes closed. He took a deep breath and expelled it slowly. "She indirectly quoted Shakespeare to me." He knew that sounded odd. _You had to be there_. "She kissed me, oh, boy, did she kiss me, after our date." Well, not counting cover kisses, that was only kiss number two. _You had to be there._ "She told me yesterday that we are dating, exclusively." _There._

"Really? That is surprising. Do you suppose she meant it?"

"God, Mom, I am so done with this conversation. Thanks for the warning—warnings, I guess. You're going to have to trust me to figure this out."

Her tone was still frail. "Trust. Not my long suit, Charles."

"Bye, Mom."

"Bye, Son."

}o{

"Sarah?"

Although Sarah knew Parks was waiting for her answer, Sarah's mind went to Carina. Carina seemed to never tire of repeating the rule— _spies don't fall in love_. For a long time in their roller-derby friendship, Sarah had thought that Carina was a true believer, that she really thought that spies did not fall in love. But eventually, Sarah realized that was a mistake on her part. Carina, Sarah realized, was, in certain ways, deeply romantic. Her cynicism about romance, about love, about real connection, was self-protection—most of the time, anyway. Carina had no use for kids or families, true, but she did, down somewhere deep in her complicated soul, believe in romance. Maybe a couple of days a week, she believed the stuff she said about love—Friday and Saturday, probably—but she didn't really believe it the other five. She repeated the mantra to Sarah for her own benefit, and because she recognized, deep down, how hungry Sarah was to love and be loved. She knew that better than Sarah did. At least, at the time. Carina was trying to protect Sarah as well as herself.

For all that Sarah denied it and denied it, early on, Carina saw how attached Sarah was to Chuck, how much she wanted him. Of course, Carina had also figured out, to a degree that Sarah herself had not, that something was up with Chuck. Carina thought Sarah knew what it was but wouldn't tell—and so did Sarah—but it turned out, of course, that Sarah hadn't known what it was. Carina's instincts had been good, if not definitive. Chuck was not an analyst. Carina didn't believe that. Chuck was also not the Intersect, as Sarah believed. In Sarah's defense, the deception had targeted her and not Carina. Carina had been a wild card—she must have sent Chuck and Casey scrambling when she showed up. _I need to ask Chuck about that_. But Carina hadn't really figured it all out. But she'd been right about how Sarah felt. And she'd been right that Chuck was a good guy, even if his goodness turned out to be more…complicated than Carina or Sarah knew.

 _Spies don't fall in love._ Because if they do, they'll see how deadening and inhuman the goddamn spy life is. _Spies don't fall in love_. Because if they do, they will see other people as morally valuable in themselves, and not just as counters in the great Greater Good Sweepstakes. _Spies don't fall in love_. Because if they do, it means Graham is no longer in complete control. _Spies don't fall in love._

Screw you, Langston Graham.

"Yes, Chris. I want that with Chuck." Sarah's leap of faith continued.

She didn't want to hurt Parks. Maybe Parks would betray her and Chuck to Graham. But Sarah wasn't going to figure out what it meant to feel as she felt about Chuck by doing this bizarre one-step-forward, one-step-back dance she'd been doing—doing since the first day at the Buy More.

She wasn't ready to sprint into the future; she'd have to feel her way. But she wanted to be moving forward with Chuck. She'd told Chuck they were dating. Exclusively. She'd said it because it was what she wanted, what she wanted to say. Ellie told her to speak. She knew what it meant in part. It meant that they were partners and more. It meant that she was committing herself to Chuck, that she was committed to finding out all that it meant to be committed to him.

She didn't have to have it all worked out. They'd make it up as they went along.

Parks' gaze dropped sadly to her hands. Sarah half-held her breath. How would Parks take this?

After blinking several times, Parks lifted her gaze. "So," she said softly, gesturing with one of her hands toward Chuck's shirt, "this means that I didn't need to worry about separate bedrooms?"

Sarah blushed deeply. "Well, I'm not sure how to answer that. Back in DC, we are dating. We agreed that on the mission we're not dating, so, although I have the shirt, I took it from Chuck's room and I…I slept in it in mine."

"So, you two aren't…"

Sarah pinched her lips together and shook her head. "We aren't."

"But you…have?"

Sarah sat there for a minute then shook her head again. "We haven't."

"Are you crazy?"

Sarah grinned, wryly, self-mockingly. "At least a little."

Parks sat back and crossed her arms. She appraised Sarah. "The shirt—it helped with the crazy?"

Sarah dropped her head slightly toward one shoulder as she raised her hands, palms up. "Enough. I guess."

"Good luck with that…Sort of." Parks smirked. "I'm not sure I'm willing to clear the field just yet, Sarah. I admit, between his impassioned defense of you—emphasis on 'impassioned'—and your sleepwear, I'm not about to predict victory. But I've waited and hoped a long time…I can't just…decamp."

Sarah stared at Parks for a minute, then shrugged. "Well, we're here, and you're team lead. I guess I'll just have to take my chances. Chuck too." Sarah stood and nodded at the other woman. "Agent Parks."

"Agent Walker." Parks nodded back.

Sarah headed to her room. Chuck emerged from his and they met in the hallway. She reached up and cupped his face, then kissed him hard, her tongue running over his lips just before she pulled back. He looked dreamy and shocked all at once.

"But, Sarah. _Chris_..." He shot a meaningful glance toward the kitchen. Sarah stepped into him, pressing her body against him, head to toe.

"Love is a battlefield, Chuck." She rose on her toes and licked his ear. "Think of that as my opening volley." She slipped past him into her room, closing the door behind her. A second later, the door cracked and his shirt came flying out, landing on his shoulder.

}o{

A couple of hours later, after more map study and planning, and after more coffee, Chuck found himself back in the car with Sarah. Parks had brought them both clothes. Flannel shirts, caps and a lined cotton duck work jacket for Chuck and lined jean jacket for Sarah. She'd also brought a couple of hunting rifles. Chuck and Sarah were going up onto the ridge above the abandoned mine, to get a better sense of the place and to see if there might be a good coign of vantage for a sniper rifle. They were posing as hunters, hunting coyote, if they saw anyone.

Sarah had her hair tucked up in her cap and had on a pair of cheap sunglasses. Chuck had a cap on and similar cheap sunglasses. The gray of the early morning had passed, and now the sun was shining, reflecting off the snow, making it tricky to see. The sky's clearing had, however, made it even colder. The roads they were on, windy even for the area, were little more than carts paths in places, and it took all the grey Camry had and all of Sarah's skill to keep them from sliding into the narrow ravines that bracketed the roads.

After about thirty-five minutes of slow, tense driving, Sarah pulled over in one of the few wide places in the road and turned off the car. She buttoned her jacket. Chuck did too. They grabbed the rifles and got out. Sarah scanned the area, then pulled out a GPS and they started for the section of the ridge overlooking the mine. The ground was snowy and frozen, treacherous here and there both because of ice and because of uneven footing masked by the snow. They worked their way into the dead, brown brush. The only sounds were the tramping crunch of their feet and the occasional snap of a branch. The cold wormed inside their jackets, and even their exertion wasn't enough to keep them both from feeling the chill.

After they had pushed through a particularly nasty snarl of briar and tangle of dead honeysuckle, they stepped out onto a narrow clearing. It was about ten or twelve feet from the briar and honeysuckle to the edge of the ridge—the earth sheared off at that point in a frozen, muddy cliff. Below them, they could see the covered mouth of the mine and the few outbuildings that were still standing. It was a depressing view.

Sarah walked to the edge and scanned the area, taking in its features. Chuck did the same, although he was sure he did it to less result. They rested the rifles on the ground. Sarah had stuffed one of the scopes from the sniper rifle Parks had brought to the safe house in the interior pocket of her jacket. She retrieved it, put her sunglasses in the pocket, and began carefully looking at the scene below. Chuck knew she was running scenarios in her head, plotting contingencies.

"So, tell me, Roy Sauer, about your illegal arms business."

"Not much to tell. Dad and Mom left me money but I…uh…invested…unwisely in Vegas. I started looking for ways to make money quickly and a friend of Dad's introduced me to…suppliers who needed someone like me, with the right sort of face and background, to work as the middleman. The front for what I do is a successful gaming company, one that designs first-person shooters. Weapons, you see, are my life." He finished and lifted one eyebrow at her, though she didn't see it.

"Good. Remember to resist the urge to provide specifics. You know the ones online, but Coombs will too. Don't supply any others, even if he pushes. He'll wonder if you get too detailed. The sort of people you are working for are not interested in Coombs knowing more about them. You'd know that."

Chuck smiled at her. "I know the drill, Sarah. Farm, remember."

Sarah lowered her scope and stared at him. "Frankly, Chuck, I do find that hard to remember, despite Agent Parks reminding me about it this morning."

Chuck looked at the ground sheepishly. "I guess after Burbank it must be hard to think of me as anything but a bungler."

"No, Chuck, after Burbank it's just hard to think of you as anything but Chuck, and Bartowski or Carmichael, Chuck doesn't seem much like a spy."

"Is that good or bad?"

"Depends, Chuck. Right now, I admit I am scared to death what I might see through my scope tonight. I want this over with and I want Lawton in custody. I need you to seem like a spy for the next several hours."

Chuck grabbed her empty hand, cold, like his. "I'll be ok, Sarah."

She held onto his hand for a little while longer as she looked through the scope at the barren black, brown and grey landscape beneath them. The only other color was green from a few scraggly pines.

"You know, Sarah, I'd like it a lot if I never had to watch you look through a scope again."

She lowered the scope and gave him a searching glance, puzzled. Then she gave him a small, sad smile as she let go of his hand, "I'm tired of scopes too, Chuck. They distort the world; they distort me. Seen and seer."

They grabbed the hunting rifles and then she turned and led him away from the ridge, back toward the car.

Once they were back in the car, Chuck kept sneaking glances at Sarah, wiping his hands on his pants. "What is it, Chuck? Tell me."

"This morning. You kissed me. I mean, Chris didn't see it, but she was there. Have the rules changed? I take it she knows we are…uh…dating? Together?"

"Well, she's been told that we are dating in DC but not on this mission. She would like to…try again with you, Chuck. She informed me that she had no intention of surrendering where you are concerned. I kissed you to remind you that I am not surrendering either, even if we are not dating here." Chuck gulped. Sarah laughed softly. "I'm hoping she tells no tales to Graham. But to keep her from doing that, you need to convince her that there's no chance for the two of you—while not making her too resentful."

"Oh. Is that all?"

Sarah turned to him for a second and then turned back to the road. "You ended things with her once and she still cared, still cares, for you. Maybe you can do it again. You are a good guy. She knows that. She just needs to know how you feel—you know, about me." Sarah paused and turned to him again. "She wants you to be happy."

"What about how you feel about me?"

"I think she's less interested in that, Chuck."

 _One day, a woman in my life will give me a direct answer to a question._

}o{

Later in the day, a dark panel truck pulled into the driveway and then stopped at the abandoned _Overcoming Life Church_. Three men got out. Each was a soldier but all were in civilian clothes. Steve, Rick, and Dave. There were to be Roy Sauer's men, brought along both as protection and to help move the weapons if a deal was struck.

In the back of the truck were several crates of assault rifles and ammunition, just the sort of thing to whet the appetite of militiaman Coombs. Of course, there was no plan for him to ever have the weapons. But they needed to convince him. Sarah was going to return to her vantage point on the ridge. Even though the meeting was going to take place after dark, if the clear skies held, the moonlight would be sufficient for Sarah's night vision scope to command the scene.

Parks had a briefcase full of money, a further sweetener for Coombs. She and Chuck—Patricia Akin (Parks' cover) and Roy Sauer—would lead the truck to the abandoned mine. They would wait for Coombs there with Sarah above them.

Chuck's job was to allow Coombs to see the weapons and the money and to explain that all he wanted for them was Lawton. The story was that Lawton had killed a member of the group for whom Chuck was the middleman, and that the group did not allow such actions to go unanswered. If all went well, Coombs would agree, would go and get Lawton, and turn him over. Admittedly, it was a shaky plan. Coombs might say no, end of story. Or he might say yes, leave, and then change his mind and never return. Or he might say yes, leave, change his mind, and return in force—perhaps with an armed Lawton. (Chuck had passed on Frost's warning.) Everything hinged on how convincing Chuck could be about it, and on how much value Coombs put on a relative who, rumors from the compound continued to confirm, was causing Coombs grief.

The plan was shaky, but short of a full-on, armed offensive on the Free Live Free compound, the only viable strategy was to try to get to Coombs, and get him to bring Lawton out. Lawton had not left the compound since he arrived, and he had no need to do so. It would also be easy for him to sneak away in the traffic to and from the place; it would take too much manpower to cover every truck and SUV that went in and out. So—this was the plan. Shaky but necessary.

Sarah was reviewing all this as she unrolled the tarp she'd brought to cover the ground on the ridge. She set up the rifle stand and the rifle, double-checked the gun and her ammunition. Fiddled with the scope. She checked her watch. Almost 5 pm. The shadows were longer, long. It got dark early in January. She had a heavy grey blanket with her and a thermos of coffee. Chuck had found the thermos in the safe house and insisted on brewing the coffee. Coombs should be along in the next hour. She put down the ear flaps of her cap, careful not to disturb her earwig. She threw the blanket around her shoulders.

Coffee. Holding a steaming cup with one hand, she closed the blanket around her shoulders with the other. She thought of Johnny Ringo in _The Gunfighter_. _His only friend was his gun._ Hers, for too much of her life, too _. How many hours had she spent alone with a rifle, waiting?_ She wasn't in a hurry to put her eye to the night vision scope, but she needed to see Chuck. _Chuck_. Her friend, the man she loved, the man who would…soon…be her lover. She shivered, but not just because of the cold. She'd feel better once she saw him.

The coffee helped a little. She felt like the encroaching dark and the cold were trying to claim her. What was the other thing that poster for _The Gunfighter_ said? _His only refuge—a woman's heart._ Hers—a man's. She'd feel better once she saw him.

}o{

Chuck snuck a glance at Parks as she drove. _Why do I almost never get to drive?_

Parks' had been quiet all day. She'd spoken when she needed to, of course, as they outlined and reviewed the plan. But he had the feeling that she was watching him, and watching him with Sarah. Chuck felt stuck between two imperatives. He needed to convince Parks that he was serious about Sarah. He needed to do that while he convinced Parks that being serious about Sarah was not a problem for them as partners. Chuck knew Parks well enough to know that she was not Graham's thrall. If she told Graham anything about them, it would almost certainly be because she thought it was the right thing to do. She wouldn't do it to score points with the Director. That'd never been Parks' style.

"Chuck, this isn't the best time for this, I know, but I want to tell you something. I heard what you said in defense of Sarah this morning. And, although I may not like it, I understand your point about me being like her. But here's the difference that you need to think about: _I can leave this job_. I could do it _today._ I didn't believe I could when we were dating. I was committed to it…and all I thought it entailed. I gave up…things for it. But I now know I can leave it. This is no life for anyone ambitious to be human. It's a life lived in the offscouring of real human life. It teaches you that your emotions don't matter, or that if they seem to, they are lying to you. It destroys your integrity. You eventually start spying on yourself. And that's the end, Chuck. When _Spy vs. Spy_ becomes the form of your inner life, it's over. It's fucking over." He could hear fear, dread, in Parks' voice.

"I grew up in Moscow, Idaho, Chuck. You know that. My parents are good people. My childhood was poor, but happy and stable. I don't know why I chose this life—misguided ambition, fantasies of glamour and travel, who knows?—but I know what another life, a normal life looks like. I know what it is to live one. When I say I want it, I know what I want. Is that true of Walker? Any of it?

"How young was she when she became an agent? We wondered at the Farm, but couldn't unearth any records. Still, wouldn't she have been a teenager? What sort of life must she have had to make the Farm seem like a good option to a teenager? Look, Chuck, maybe it's too late for you and me, but it's not too late to rethink you and her. I know you. You are not going to stay in the spy life. But how can she leave it? What would be left when the spy was gone?"

Chuck said nothing. He knew that what Parks said represented not just her worries, but his Mom's and, most importantly, Sarah's too. It wasn't like Chuck didn't understand the worries, like they made no sense to him. He just didn't have them. He had Sarah—and she was so much more than Parks knew, than his Mom knew, than Sarah herself knew. He was better with her. Genuinely better. That couldn't be true if she were what everyone thought. He just had to hang on until Sarah came to know—and to trust—Sarah. He just had to _hang on_.

More days in the goddamn spy life. But she was worth it.

* * *

 **A/N2** Next time, from They Might Be Giants to Devo: "I've been working in a coal mine/Going down, down". Tune in. Shots will be fired. Shoot me a review as you leave.


	10. Chapter 10: Working in a Coal Mine

**A/N1** More of our mission. Check your seatbelts. Put on the Devo tune. "Oops, about to slip down..."

Thanks for reading and responding, gentle readers. I've enjoyed the reviews and PMs and resulting conversations. I'm indebted to you all.

Don't own Chuck.

* * *

 **Turned Tables**

 _The His, Hers and Ours Mission_

* * *

Saturday, January 10, 2008  
Outside of Romney, West Virginia  
4:40 pm

* * *

CHAPTER 10 Working in a Coal Mine

* * *

Parks drove her car cautiously along the old road to the abandoned mine. The road was pitted with holes. The undercarriage of the car threatened to drag when the tires settled into the often-deep ruts that counted as the road. The car emerged from the overhanging trees and brush. An old, rusted fence stretched off on each side of the road, swallowed by underbrush and coming darkness in both directions. There was a sign, leaning severely but still legible in the twilight: _Top Hat Mine 1_.

Chuck turned to Parks and smiled. "I guess I'm underdressed."

She smirked at him. "Time to get serious, Chuck."

Chuck scrunched his features, displeased. "You know what Sartre said about that, don't you?"

Parks inhaled sharply. "No, Chuck. But I am guessing you do, since you asked."

His scrunch smirked. "Sartre said…that anguish is opposed to the spirit of seriousness."

Parks turned to him, unenlightened. "And that means?"

Chuck shrugged slightly. "I guess it means that taking life seriously and silliness are not only compatible, they go together." He waited for Parks to react.

"Good to know." She said flatly, turning back to guide the car to a stop not far from what had been the mouth of the mine.

The dark panel truck was behind them. Steve, the tall, thin soldier driving it, pulled to the opposite side of the mouth. The other two soldiers got out. They opened the back of the truck and grabbed automatic rifles for themselves. One of them, Rick, small but broad, carried a holster with a pistol in it to Steve, who took it as he climbed out of the driver's seat. Dave, who seemed ubiquitously medium, height, hair color, weight, everything, settled in near one corner of the truck.

Chuck had watched all of this while still seated in the car with Parks. He got out and turned on the comms, checking the earwigs. "Sarah?"

"I hear you, Chuck. And I can see you." He could hear a twinge of untensing emotion in her voice, and he realized how tense he had been. He took a deep breath for the first time since he watched her drive away earlier. Everyone else checked in. All was in order. They were ready.

Chuck was wearing a pair of khaki slacks and a blue cashmere sweater under his leather jacket. Parks had supplied him with an IWC pilot's watch—part of the cover. He checked the expensive time. 5 pm. Coombs should be along soon. Parks had gotten out of the car and shut her door. She was leaning against it, looking over the roof toward the road. She threw him a small flashlight and pocketed one herself, in case Coombs demanded a better view of the weapons or the money.

Chuck's nerves pushed him into motion. He walked over to the mouth of the mine. Concrete had been poured around it, extending out on both sides. A heavy metal door was the only means of access, and it had a heavy padlock on it. Signs— _No Trespass_ , _Danger_ —hung from the door.

Old beer cans and cigarettes dotted the ground; the remains of high school parties, likely. There were a couple of holes with burnt logs and ashes in them where fires had been built. Chuck almost tripped as he avoided the remnants of an old condom.

"What was that, Chuck?" He realized Sarah was still watching him.

"Um, nothing. Nothing. You know me, two left feet."

Stars were becoming visible overhead. The sky had remained clear. But the temperature was plunging. Chuck could see his breath, and the breath of the soldiers near the truck.

Sarah's voice was in his ear, mission-toned. "Ok, everyone, I see lights. You should hear them soon. The militia is coming. Coombs is coming. One set of lights."

Everyone heard Sarah. Chuck made sure he could get to the tranq gun under his jacket. He heard weapons cocking around him. _Showtime_. He took a deep breath and plastered a smile on his face, becoming Roy Sauer. He shifted his posture to _entitled prick._ He heard an engine. Engines. _Engines?_

And then he heard Sarah, her now-urgent whisper more frightening than a yell. "Oh, Jesus. Two, three trucks. Their lights just went on. Goddamn, Chuck, they're coming in hot!"

The next moments were a terrifying mélange of roaring engines, headlights, weapons' fire and confused voices, yells. Coombs had arrived. The Free Live Free had arrived. In force.

}o{

Through her scope, Sarah saw the trailing trucks' headlights flip on just as the one in the front tore into the clearing surrounding the mine. That lead truck built its speed. Sarah saw that it had a blade—a snow blade—on the front. "Chuck, Chris! Move, goddamn it." Sarah had no chance to see what happened in detail. At high speed, the truck rammed Parks car, the sound of screaming, wrenching metal echoing up to Sarah's position as she lay on the tarp, under the blanket. She felt a scream rising inside her as she scanned the scene.

Then she saw Chuck and Parks. They were on the ground on the other side of the mangled car, struggling to get up. The scream fell. She whirled the barrel of her rifle and trained it on the silhouette of the driver of the truck. She snapped off a shot. The dark shape slumped. She could hear the engine of the truck racing. The driver had evidently gotten it into neutral before Sarah killed him. He had a dead foot was on the gas.

Another man leaped from the passenger side of the truck and Sarah dropped him before he'd lifted his gun. She whirled her rifle further. The second truck—an SUV, she now realized—had slipped off to the side and she saw four men climb out. She started to aim at one when her gut told her to check the third and final truck. It slid to a stop at an angle to the panel truck. It was another pickup, but a heavy gun was mounted in the bed. The man behind the gun opened fire on the soldiers. Sarah could not only hear the shots, she could feel them. Sarah made herself go slow. Slower than she wanted. Too important to be sloppy.

She exhaled and trained the sights on the man behind the gun. She squeezed the trigger as she finished her exhale. She saw his head snap back in a spray of red, and the gun's barrel sink down as his hands slipped off it.

"Chuck, four men are out of the truck. They've spread out…" Sarah was searching the site, but finding no one. She was about to scan the area again, when she heard a sound from behind her. She felt a sudden pinching sensation in her shoulder.

"Well, well, well…So, Meeks Lawton finally gets to meet the Ice Queen. In Romney, West Virginia. Now isn't that…fascinating."

"Chuck! Lawton'sss…hereee…" Sarah collapsed into black.

}o{

"Sarah!" Chuck yelled when he heard her words. He turned to start…where?...toward her. He'd climb the cliff face. He had to get to her. But he felt a hand grab his coat, pulling him back toward the door of the mine.

"No, Chuck. There're four men out there. They'll kill you before you get ten yards." Parks had her pistol out and she fired into the lock on the door. Behind them, Chuck heard a groan. One of the soldiers, Steve. He pulled himself around the end of their car. He'd been hit multiple times, and was bleeding out. "Go, I'm done," he said as Parks yanked the lock off the door. "I'll hold them off. Go!"

Parks grabbed Chuck and wheeled him around, pulled him through the door. She slammed the door. Parks took out her small flashlight and clicked it on. The beam was narrow but remarkably bright. She swept it ahead of them. They were on a small wooden platform. On one side was a set of metal shelves holding hard hats and other safety items. On the other side was a tall, narrow desk. Clipboards hung on the wall above it. Parks trained the light on each of them quickly. One had a map of the mine. She tore the sheet from the clipboard.

Chuck had been standing, watching her, in shock. Shots rang outside. Steve was holding the men off, as he said he would. Chuck finally came to himself.

"Sarah! Chris, I've got to get to her." He spun back toward the door. She grabbed his coat again, pulling his face to hers. She smacked him, hard. She smacked him again.

"No, Chuck. I understand. I do. Something got seriously screwed up. This was Coombs' trap for us, not ours for him. He knew, Chuck. He _knew_. Someone sold us out." She shook her head. "No time to think about that now.

"Believe Sarah is alive, Chuck. We didn't hear a shot over the comms. There's a chance. We have to stay alive if we are going to be of any use to Sarah, Chuck. C'mon."

Chuck felt his eyes fill with tears; his breathing was ragged. He'd faced danger in the past without panic, or without much—but the woman he loved was never the one threatened, maybe worse… And then he heard his mom's voice in his head, Frost's, the thing she'd say to him when he was a boy, she was home, and he was upset, emotional. "Channel emotion into action. Do something about how you feel, Chuck!"

Chuck looked at Parks, swallowing his terror and bile in one gulp.

"Ok. What do we do?"

"We move deeper into the mine. Maybe they won't chase us. Maybe there is a way out. Maybe we can turn the tables on them down in the dark. Is your phone working?" She pulled Chuck behind her and they stepped down off the platform onto the dusty earthen floor of the mine.

Chuck looked at this phone. No signal. Parks checked hers too. Same result. The mine was interfering. "No. Not here. Maybe back by the door?"

They heard another series of shots. A lone scream. Then multiple voices.

"No, we have to go." With Parks' flashlight guiding them, they went rushed deeper into the mine, moving as fast as they could over the uneven floor of the mine. The voices outside the door grew fainter. Chuck realized that the men were in no hurry to rush the door. They had no way of knowing where he and Parks were inside.

Parks continued to lead them deeper into the mine. The floor was now strewn with debris. Old tools, pieces of lumber, chunks of coal and chunks of earth. The tunnel they were in began to narrow and its walls were crudely hewn. After a few more minutes, they arrived at a fork in the tunnel. Parks stopped and checked her map. Chuck looked at it over her shoulder, making sure he saw it all, committing it to memory, so that he would know it if they lost the paper copy.

It was unclear whether there was any other exit from the mine. One path from the fork looked as though it led only to deeper, closed levels. The other went on for a while and then the map just stopped, as if it had the mine or the map or both had been left unfinished. Parks pointed to that path. "At least there's a possibility of getting out that way."

Chuck responded, "Ok, let's go."

As they took the left fork, they heard gunfire behind them. The men had finally rushed the door. They heard a voice echoing in the distance. "All clear. After them." Parks began to run and Chuck did too.

They ran until they reached another fork and this time they went to the right. The air in the mine was getting close, thin. They were both gasping. Parks slowed. Chuck realized that she was having to work hard to keep up with him. With his long legs, he was eating distance with each stride.

He needed to stop too, to catch his breath, but at least the running felt like he was doing something, kept him from screaming Sarah's name and running back toward the entrance to the mine, taking his chances, doing anything he could to reach her. His mom had warned him about Lawton. Damn it. How had Coombs and Lawton known?

How had his mom known where he was? How had she known about Lawton? Parks had said it: someone knew. His mom knew.

Chuck shook his head. It was too much. Too much. Sarah was all that mattered now. Staying alive so that he could find her.

Parks nodded at him. She was ready to go. They could hear noises from behind them, but the echoes make it impossible to gauge distance exactly. They needed to find a place from which to counter-attack, if they couldn't find an escape. Chuck pictured the map in his head. They were near the place where the map stopped. What would they find there?

They ran again, but slower, not only because they were tiring, but also because the mine was becoming more and more treacherous. The floor was now strewn with debris and was dangerously uneven. Stones and loose rock were everywhere. The ceiling was now high, now low—sometimes so low Chuck had to crouch to get through. It was clear that the reason the map played out was that the tunnel was more a first draft than anything finished. Chuck now began to fear that this was a dead end. They would be trapped. He looked at Parks running beside him; she was clearly thinking the same thing.

And then it happened. They rounded a corner to come face to face with solid earth, tunnel's end. Parks whirled around. "Maybe we can get back to the last fork before they do."

"No, you know we can't. We'll just have to head back and see if we can find some cover. There was that one rough section with the really low ceiling. The tunnel turned a bit there. We could catch them as there. Better than standing here with our backs to the wall, literally."

"Ok."

They ran back up the tunnel to the section Chuck mentioned. Chuck took the inner part of the turn of the turn, leaving Parks the outer. When she looked a question at him, he shrugged and whispered. "You're the better shot. They'd be on you immediately here. I will take the first one on this side."

They heard footfalls. Chuck pressed himself against the dirt wall. Parks kneeled next to the opposite wall. Chuck took off his leather coat and held it out in his hands. The footfalls were now unmistakably close, despite the echoes. Chuck fought to calm his breathing, to keep from thinking of Sarah.

The first man came around the corner, still crouched from passing beneath the low ceiling. Chuck leaped forward, draping his coat around the man's head. Holding it, he yanked the man's head downward violently while bringing his knee up as hard as he could. He kneed the man's face with tremendous force, and he felt the man crumple as he went down.

As Chuck looked up, pulling his jacket free from the prone form of the man he'd knocked out, he heard Parks' pistol fire, its sound filling the tunnel and his head, deafening and painful. The second man through went down.

Chuck launched himself at the next man, still under the low ceiling. Chuck half-crawled, half-rolled into man's bent legs as a gun went off behind the man. The fourth man had fired. Chuck knew he wasn't hit. He had no idea about Parks.

Chuck hit the third man's legs so hard he took the man's feet out from under him. The man pitched forward, landing on his hands, and losing both the pistol and the flashlight he'd been holding. Chuck heard another shot and felt dirt sprinkle on him. Just missed. The man he'd knocked down went scrambling for his pistol. Another shot and the man stopped crawling and sagged into the dirt. Chuck looked behind him and saw Parks, her pistol smoking, the echo of the shot still bouncing up the tunnel.

The fourth man was running. Parks got out of her crouch and began to run after the man. "That's Coombs! I got a glance at his face when the flashlight fell. We can't let him get away. He's the best chance to save Sarah." Parks was past him when she finished.

Chuck got to his feet and dashed after her. He passed her and began to gain on Coombs. Chuck was fast, very fast, when he needed to be. He'd survived the bullies of his childhood on quick wits and his foot speed.

Coombs stumbled ahead of Chuck, the flashlight Coombs was using sending its beam sweeping crazily to the floor and then to the ceiling before Coombs caught himself. Coombs' stumble decreased his lead. Chuck was close enough now to hear Coombs gasping breaths.

Another stride. Another. Another. Chuck reached out, stretched his long arm. He lunged. His hand twisted in the collar of Coombs' jacket. Chuck jerked Coombs back into him, and their legs tangled. They both fell hard on the floor, skidding into the dirt. Chuck landed atop Coombs, but Coombs twisted around to face Chuck.

Chuck punched Coombs in the face. And again. Coombs thrust upward and threw Chuck off him. As Coombs scrambled to get up, he found a piece of wood on the ground and picked it up. He got to his feet and swung the piece of wood at Chuck. Chuck caught it. The blow was powerful, fueled by muscle and desperation. Chuck felt for a moment as if his hands had shattered. Coombs tried to wrest the wood from Chuck, but Chuck managed to hold on, despite the numb shock spreading from his hands up his forearms and making his elbows ache. The wood was rough, and Chuck saw blood running between his fingers. Although the pain was vague, he could tell that his palms were shredded.

"Freeze, Coombs." Parks had caught up with them and had her pistol leveled at Coombs. Coombs slowly let go of the piece of wood. Chuck tossed it down the tunnel. Parks made Coombs get down on his knees and put his hands behind him. She had handed Chuck a zip tie restraint and he slipped it on Coombs' hands, blood from his Chuck's hands running onto the tie and onto Coombs' hands. Chuck hoisted Coombs on his feet. He and Parks marched Coombs out of the mine.

The scene outside was grisly. The three soldiers were all dead. Chuck checked them first. The pickup truck's engine was still racing. Chuck reached in past the driver's corpse to shut it off. The man who'd been firing the machine gun from the other pickup's bed was dead too. As was the driver of that pickup. Evidently, one of the soldiers, maybe Steve, had gotten him.

While Chuck swept the area, Parks made a phone call. A CIA cleaner team was on the way. Local law enforcement evidently knew nothing of the events. After she finished her call, Parks helped Chuck pull the body of the driver out of the first pickup. Chuck pulled off the man's camo coat and used it to mop up the blood inside the cab. Parks looked at Chuck's hands and told him she would drive. She handed Chuck her gun. They put Coombs between them. Parks started driving away from the mine as quickly as she could.

Chuck put Parks' pistol to Coombs' head.

"Where is Lawton?" Coombs turned to grin into Chuck's face. Coombs' flat face and oversized features made it look like he was wearing a mask.

"I ain't telling you shit, CIA. Not shit." The pickup truck left the dirt road and turned onto the blacktop. Parks increased speed.

Chuck sat there with the gun against Coombs' head for a few minutes. When Chuck finally spoke, his voice was sepulchral.

"Oh, Coombs, you are so going to tell me what I want to know." Chuck moved the pistol and jammed it against Coombs kneecap. "I will find Lawton. I will ruin you for life if it is necessary. I am going to shoot you in the kneecap. And that will only be the beginning of what I will do. I will shoot you in the other kneecap. You will never walk again Coombs. If you don't talk to me then, I will get my partner's knife," Chuck looked up at Parks who was listening in open-mouthed astonishment, "I will get her knife and I will take fingers. I won't start with the little ones, Coombs, no, I'll start with your thumbs and I will work toward the little ones. You will never pick up a coin again, or hold a fork, or give someone the finger." Chuck forced all his panic and fear into the threat, his horror of what might have happened or might still happen to Sarah. Coombs considered Chuck's eyes. He folded.

"I have a cabin, way up on the ridge. If she ain't dead, she's there. I was supposed to meet Lawton there in the morning. We were going to split the cash and there would be a buyer for the weapons. We'd be gone by tomorrow noon."

Parks pulled into the driveway of the _Overcoming Life Church_. When she got to the building, she parked in front. She got out and motioned for Coombs scoot to her side and to get out too. Chuck got out of the passenger side, careful to keep the pistol trained on Coombs. Chuck circled the front of the truck and handed Parks her pistol, dried blood from his hands caked on the handle. She led Coombs into the church. When he heard the door close, Chuck sank to his knees and vomited beneath the church's sign.

When he finished, he got up quickly but unsteadily, wiped his mouth on his sleeve, and hurried inside. _I will find you, Sarah, I will. Whatever it takes_.

}o{

Sarah returned to consciousness enwrapped in Chuck's arms. His lips left a searing trail of kisses from her ear down her neck and…lower…Her desire for him was tidal—vast, natural and inexorable. "Now, Chuck, please, now…."

"…Now, she decides to wake up. Must've been a nice dream." The voice she had heard before. Before…before… _Chuck_! _Oh, God, no_. Fully awake in a moment, Sarah took in her surroundings. She was in a crude cabin. She was zip-tied to a heavy chair, arms and feet alike bound. There was a fire in the fireplace. A kerosene lantern provided the other illumination in the room. Standing before her, his narrow face gloating, was Meeks Lawton. He walked to the fire and stirred it with a poker. The poker's end glowed; it had been resting in the fire. Meeks provoked the fire for a moment, then seemed satisfied with it. He left the poker partly in the flames.

Lawton looked like his file picture. Skeletal but not weak. He moved with care, an obvious sense of himself and his placement in space. He had a forgettable face, thin and lined, but his features were otherwise regular. Nothing about the man was memorable. Sarah knew that was a reason he had been a successful contract killer. Being non-descript was like wearing camouflage.

Lawton crossed the room to a small table and picked up a chair. He stood it in front of Sarah and sat down. He crossed his legs, waving his foot in the air. It was a disconcerting posture. He looked like he was about to tell her some funny story, like they were friends, pals. Hanging out.

"Agent Sarah Walker, a.k.a. the Ice Queen, a.k.a. Langston's Graham's wildcard enforcer. Bryce Larkin's…bunkmate. You have no idea, really simply no idea, how thrilled I am to meet you. I've known about you for a long time, even studied you. You are gifted, gifted. I consider you one of the few killers whose body of work—whose body of work really simply, your _oeuvre_ , in both quantity and quality—exceeds mine. A master, really simply, a master, that is what you are." Lawton finally slowed down for a moment to take a breath. He frowned. "I dare say, I do dare say that you lose points for not being self-employed. An artist who takes orders is, well, less free than she should be. Her creative powers are shackled. Really simply…."

Since Lawton seemed determined to go on like this, Sarah took a moment, while half-listening, to orient herself more fully. It was dark out—she could see that through the window. She saw that her watch, her knives and her phone were all laid out neatly on the small table. Beneath it was her cap and her jacket, her boots and her socks, neatly folded and carefully placed. The tranquilizer had played havoc with her sense of time, but she knew that she had not been in the chair long. Her muscles were not yet complaining about it. Neither her wrists nor her ankles felt raw from the zip ties. It was maybe a couple of hours at most since Lawton had taken her.

She felt her chest constrict, so tight it felt like her heart could not beat. Two hours. What had happened to Chuck, to Parks, in those two hours?

"…Now, _that_ Sarah (may I call you Sarah?), _that_ was a kill I admired." Lawton smiled at her as if expecting her to reciprocate, his foot bouncing up and down. Sarah just looked at him. He leaned back in his chair and folded his arms. As he did, Sarah saw scratches on his hands that looked like they continued up his arms. Lawton must've carried her to his car—to _a_ car. He had to be considerably stronger than his size or his manner suggested.

"Are you really simply going to waste this opportunity for a collegial talk? How often, Sarah, do two people like us get to sit down together, really simply sit down and have a…fireside chat?" When Sarah did not respond, Lawton got up and walked to the fire. He extended his hands, palms facing the flames. He stood like that for several seconds, then he rubbed his hands together, and rubbed his hands up and down his arms. He walked over to the sink and filled a tea kettle with water from a water bottle. He walked back and hung the kettle on a stand that allowed him to suspend the kettle above the fire.

"Tea, Sarah?" She continued to look at him without speaking. He shrugged, evidently willing to keep the conversation going without her contributions.

"I have a question for you. I have spent many hours pondering it. Why do people like us do what we do?

"I recognize, intellectually, that it violates what people call 'the moral code'. But you and I know what it is like to live beyond good and evil. Categories like that are for people who have not seen life for what it truly is, who have not faced that it is utterly meaningless, top to bottom, front to back. Life is a long sojourn in a silent place, the only sounds are occasional screams, the only real warmth, fresh blood. When you or I kill, all we do is eliminate one sufferer of meaninglessness from the general meaninglessness. I'd say it was a public service—except that would suggest it had a meaning.

"You see, I think the answer is that we do what we do because we like to do it, really simply. Forget all the philosophical twaddle...

"There is no better moment than the one when you see someone dead by your own hand, while you remain gloriously alive, filled with triumph. That contrast—the target dead, you alive—tell me that not really simply the best moment there is…Every other moment you are only half alive." Lawton looked at her, his face filled with a hunger that chilled Sarah's heart. The tea kettle over the fire began to whine.

Lawton got a potholder from the kitchen and removed the kettle from the fireplace. He got a cup from the cabinet and pulled a teabag from a mason jar full of them.

Watching Lawton make tea so calmly, so normally, after that dark soliloquy made Sarah's head spin.

She thought about what Lawton had said. She knew the moment he was talking about—that moment when she was alive and the person she had terminated was, well, terminated. But that had never felt like a moment of triumph to her. In fact, it had always—Every. Single. Time.—felt like defeat, utter defeat. She was the loser. She felt more dead than the target, as if that were a coherent thought, as if death were gradable. She'd lost more of herself. She had always secretly harbored the fear, real and urgent but unuttered, that she was like Lawton, like someone of his sort. She had harbored the fear that she was a killer—not in the sense that she had killed—yes, she was a killer in that sense—but in the sense that killing was essential to her, that it was a primal need. But, no, she was not and she had never been a killer like that. She _knew_ that. How had she not known that?

She killed under orders. Lawton did not. He killed because he loved to kill, and because he could make money doing what he loved. Lawton chose to kill, he desired it. He killed freely. Sarah did not. Lawton was right about that, and it was an important difference. True, no one pulled Sarah's trigger finger for her, or held a gun to her head as she aimed her rifle, but given her childhood, she'd been deprived of the chance to refuse to become what she had become. She had become a killer before she knew what that meant. She could have walked away once she knew what it meant, but she was too busy running from what she had become.

Graham kept her too busy to understand that there was an open door in her cage. But to walk, to walk through it, she would have to turn around, change. And she had had no conception of what she might become instead, of whether change was possible.

And now Chuck was in her cage with her, telling her, sometimes by word but mostly by deed, that there was an open door. He knew it. That is how he entered her cage. He knew the door was open. He knew where it was. He could help her turn, change. He was helping her.

He _was_. Wrong tense. He _is_. Her gut told her Chuck was out there, that he'd survived Coombs' trap. He would come for her. He'd always come for her. She wasn't alone. She just had to hang on. _Hang on, Sarah_.

Lawton took his seat again. He'd put his teacup on a chipped saucer and was slowly dipping his steeping teabag, considering her through the rising steam. He stopped dipping the teabag. He got up and threw the teabag into the fire, causing a sighing sound as it landed in the flames. The sound seemed to please Lawton and he sat back down. He continued to consider her as he sipped the tea. Sarah kept her face stone.

"I admit I did not go to this trouble just to gush over you like a fanboy," he confessed with a chilling grin, "I have other concerns. Bigger concerns. I need to know what the CIA knows about…me." He sipped his tea.

Sarah contemplated remaining silent. But interrogation was always a double-edged sword. It was hard to get others to reveal secrets without inadvertently revealing your own. "You are a Fulcrum agent. One of the last important ones. You were a contract killer. Those are the bullet points." _Really, a pun, here, now? Oh, Chuck, what have you done to me? -Keep doing it, please._

Lawton smiled, the smile spreading slowly on his lips, like a poison. "Really simply? That is all? Agent Parks must be—must have been—slipping. Alas, I mourn her loss," he chuckled, pleased, "a little, a very little. She was good at her job. I never suspected her when I knew her in Europe."

"So how did you know about what was planned tonight?" Sarah tried to sound as vulnerable as she felt.

Lawton's smile spread further. "Now, now, Sarah. That is not information you need to know. We have our ways."

"We?"

Lawton narrowed his eyes. She saw a flash of displeasure. He'd said more than he intended. Just because it was a cliché did not mean it told Sarah nothing. Someone had told them, she was now sure of that. Coombs and Lawton did not figure this out on their own. That was not the _we_ he had in mind. That _we_ did not involve Coombs.

Lawton looked at the poker in the fire, making sure she saw him do so. "Can I believe you, Sarah? Or do I need to vet what you have said?" He got up and walked to the sink again. Putting down his cup and saucer, he opened the doors beneath it and took out a black leather bag, like a doctor's bag. He opened it and rummaged around for a minute. He grunted. He pulled a small vial from the bag and then he reached in again and pulled a hypodermic from it. He sat them on the sink, again making sure she saw what he had done.

Right now, she knew, this was all a show. It might take a grimmer turn soon, but Lawton was working in stages. Torture was unreliable. But the threat of torture—that sometimes worked. Fear had a different sort of effect on the mind than pain. Lawton was working to produce fear. And Sarah was afraid—of Lawton, of course, but more of what might have happened at the mine. That fear continued to compress her chest, squeeze her heart.

"Sarah, tonight has so far been a pleasure," he picked up his cup and saucer and sipped his tea again. "I see no reason why we need to veer in…another direction. So, let me ask again. Reassure me. What does the CIA know about me?" He sipped his tea as he walked toward her. He stopped beside her, putting his hand on her shoulder. The gesture might have been friendly if he was someone else, if she were someone else, if they were elsewhere. That made the gesture not just threatening, but appalling. She felt her stomach knot.

"You know," he started in a less demanding tone, "Larkin and I crossed paths once. I asked him about you. He was reluctant to talk about you. At first, I thought him gallant. Later, I was not sure." He shrugged, squeezing her shoulder. "Oh, well." His voice became demanding again. "What does the CIA know about me?"

"Exactly what I told you."

Lawton leaned down and put his face right in front of hers. "You have hard eyes to read, Agent Walker. I imagine that must aid you professionally. What does it do for you personally, I wonder? Really simply hard to read." He went quiet for a while.

The fire in the fireplace was beginning to die down. Sarah could feel the damp West Virginia cold entering the cabin. She shivered. Lawton noticed.

He walked to the sink, picked up the hypodermic and the vial. He filled the hypodermic, looking at her as he pushed the plunger slightly and clear liquid squirted from the needle. Satisfied, he walked to her. "Have you told me the truth, Sarah?" She nodded her head, her eyes on the needle. "Let's test that, shall we. This is a new truth serum developed by…Fulcrum. It has tremendous power. Its onset can be…difficult. But once it passes, you will be in a mood to share. No matter what sort of training you may have had."

He rolled up the sleeve of her flannel shirt. She shivered again as the needle went into her upper arm.

}o{

Sarah came to consciousness massively, suddenly, her body jolting. She gasped. The cabin was freezing. There were still embers in the fireplace, but they were no match for the cold. She looked over to the sink. Lawton was on the floor, blood pooled around him. He had still had a gun in his hand. She heard a low groan from behind her, and Chuck crawled into her peripheral vision. She turned to him. He slumped onto his side. A growing bloodstain was visible on his chest. _No!_

"Chuck!" Her vocal chords felt stretched, unresponsive. Her voice sounded…wrong. "Chuck! Cut me loose so I can help you."

He looked at her the way only he looked at her, the way that renewed her. Except now he was saying goodbye. She needed to touch him. He was so far away.

"Chuck, please, no. Chuck, I love you."

"I love you too, Sarah," he answered, his voice a plangent whisper in her ear, his breath warm against her skin.

* * *

 **A/N2** Yes, that last bit was deliberate. Are we having fun yet? Devo: "Lord, I am so tired...How long can this go on?"


	11. Chapter 11: The First Time I Died

**A/N1** Well, here we go.

Thanks for reading and responding. I would very much like to hear from you, even just to say you are enjoying the story.

Today's chapter title, as some of you may recognize, is the first line of Dorothy Parker's "Epitaph" poem.

A general reminder. Specific canon events have been reimagined as the story has gone along, and you will sometimes need to recall the reimagined events to make sense of what is happening or being said. For example, Chap 7's conversation about Lou matters to what occurs here.

If you have read any of my stories, you know that they routinely circle back on themselves. That will happen quite a lot in this one, given the premise.

Don't own Chuck.

* * *

 **Turned Tables**

 _The His, Hers and Ours Mission_

* * *

Saturday, January 10, 2008  
Romney, West Virginia  
 _Overcoming Life Church_ (Abandoned Building)  
7:57pm

* * *

CHAPTER 11 The First Time I Died

* * *

Chuck's gait was still unsteady as he walked down the center aisle of the abandoned church, toward the light bulb hanging over the table.

Parks was standing off to the side of the table. Coombs was seated on the floor, looking around the church as if he were frightened by it, frightened to be inside it. Parks watched Chuck cover the final few feet to the table. Her eyes were fastened to him, fear and worry gathered in the hunch of her shoulders.

Despite his stomach churning, and his heart beating as if it were empty, he tried to meet her eyes with a smile. He had scared her, he knew. He had scared himself—scared himself sick. Parks gestured at Coombs by shrugging one shoulder.

"He gave me the directions to the cabin. As soon as someone gets here to take him, we can go get Sarah." Parks was clearly trying to be upbeat, encouraging. She smiled through the other emotions playing across her face.

"No," Chuck answered gently. "You wait, Chris. I'll go after her. Every moment I lose is a moment during which…something might happen. I've got to go." Parks bit her lower lip, but then she pointed to a scrap of paper on the table.

"I thought you would say that. I wrote the directions down. Chuck, you understand who Lawton is, right? You understand that you are overmatched? Why won't you wait? Your chances will be better if I am with you."

Chuck closed his eyes and forced himself to breathe. "I know, Chris. But will Sarah's, if we wait?"

Parks' silence was her answer. She glanced at Coombs. He was slumped on the floor. She reached down and took a pistol from an ankle holster and sat it on the table, then she reloaded her other one, the one still bloody from Chuck's hands.

"Lawton's a killer, Chuck. But you are the better man. Hold on to that." She extended the gun to him and he took it.

She put her hand on his shoulder as he turned. "Stay alive. Save her."

Chuck nodded once and then left the church. Outside, he climbed back into the pickup. The smell of blood still filled the cabin, but he had no time to do anything about it. His hands were killing him, aching and stinging. He popped open the glove compartment. Inside was an old rag. He tore it in two and wrapped a half snug around each palm. It helped.

He started the engine, checked the gas. More than enough. He put the truck in gear and started after Sarah.

}o{

The headlights of the pickup bored twin holes in the darkness. Chuck was winding up into the mountains, higher even than he had been with Sarah when they were up above the abandoned mine.

Chuck's throat was burning. The acrid stench of bile and the sweet-sticky smell of blood hung around him. The feeling of loss and emptiness in his chest seemed to be expanding, threatening to swallow him from the inside.

The last time he had felt anything like this was when he realized that his dad was gone. His dad had been wonderful, and he and Chuck had a deep connection. They were so alike. His father was gifted, a computer engineer. He taught at UCLA and had his own lab in the basement of their home. Chuck spent the best hours of his childhood there, playing games with his father, later helping him solve problems, and develop new ideas. His dad's mind and his mind were attuned to one another. Like a Vulcan mind-meld or something.

Chuck loved his mother, but she was always…different from the other mothers he knew. She loved him and loved Ellie and loved his dad, but her love was always guarded and tentative, almost as if she were holding back some crucial part of herself that she could not or would not give to anyone else. That had never changed, not over the years. Chuck later believed that his mother was trapped between commitments, one to her family and one to the Company, to the CIA. She could not let go of either, and so each got only a part of her. Chuck never could decide whether it was her family or the Company that got the best part.

But Chuck's dad, for all his involvement in his teaching and research, had never been distant or partial. He'd been fully present, and not just to Chuck, but to Ellie too, even though she did not share his interests to the degree Chuck did. His dad's complete commitment made his mother's incomplete commitment bearable. But then things started to change.

One day, while playing a game together, Chuck's dad just…zoned out. Chuck at the time had no better phrase. The episodes started lasting longer each time. His dad would just lock up. He would not talk, not react. He stared forward but seemed to see nothing. Chuck's mom took him to doctors, but no one seemed to understand the problem. And then one day, he started to wander during the episodes. He left the house and walked around the neighborhood the first time. But after that, he would go farther, stay away longer. He seemed like a different man during the episodes, and seemed to only dimly recognize Chuck or Ellie or his mother. One day, he wandered away during an episode and never returned.

He'd promised the kids that morning that he would make pancakes. But they had no syrup. He went to the store to get some and never came back. A clerk at the store, a woman who had worked there for years, said that Chuck's dad had come through her line, bought syrup, and left. She said that he seemed not to know her and that he seemed like he might be walking in his sleep.

Chuck's mom became more, not less, distant after his dad disappeared. She traveled more. Eventually, she hired a full-time caregiver for Chuck and Ellie, and only came home on weekends and holidays. Ellie effectively became Chuck's mother and father, stepping into the huge gaps her parents left in her brother's life.

When Chuck graduated from high school and started at Stanford, his mother moved to DC, made official what had been unofficial. He saw her irregularly, now and then when he could find time to get to DC. They talked on the phone sometimes. But Ellie remained his real lifeline.

Chuck had never fully recovered from that day of loss, Syrup Day, as he and Ellie dubbed it. Pancakes became a meal they ate in memory of their father, and of the life that wandered away that day.

That day. That time. _The first time I died_.

Now, he felt like he was living out another version of that day, as if the life he wanted were being taken from him again. Chuck did not understand what took his dad. But he knew what—who—had taken Sarah. _Lawton_. Lawton Chuck could do something about—he had to. He had felt powerless, he had been powerless, when his father left. He was not powerless now.

He had to find a way to save her. He could not be too late. _This will not be the next time I die._

}o{

Chuck stopped the truck at a long distance from the cabin. It meant a time-consuming walk in the dark, but he could not chance Lawton hearing the truck, hearing him coming. The chance of traps was slim. Coombs called this a hunting cabin. He and Lawton couldn't have had more than a couple of days to try to put the plan together. They'd clearly thought the night would go their way.

His hands were aching and throbbing. He unwrapped his gun hand, hissing quietly to himself as the cloth tore away from his wounded palm. Luckily, although it bled, the bleeding was not as heavy as before. He picked up the gun from where he had put it on the seat of the truck, and he started up the hill.

The night remained clear. Chuck was able, after a moment's adjustment, to see well enough to pick his way along the road. After many miserable minutes, he finally saw the cabin, and saw a weak light shining out of its one front window. Chuck worked closer to the cabin.

He made himself concentrate on each footfall. He would not let himself stare at the cabin, no matter how true it was that his heart was already in the cabin. He had never been good at this sort of drill at the Farm—because he just hadn't cared enough about the end to attend completely to the means. Saving a dummy just didn't matter to him and he was not competitive enough to care about turning in the best performance. He only cared about doing well enough to get through it.

Now, each step was a step for Sarah. Each movement a movement for her. He could not tolerate failure in the means because he could not tolerate failing Sarah. In complete silence, he reached the edge of the cabin. He controlled his breathing and listened. He could hear a voice—a man's voice. He was talking to… _Sarah_. Chuck heard the man use her name. His relief was so profound that for a moment he forgot where he was, who he was. There was only the consciousness of her, that she was alive. _Alive_!

But…Something was nagging at Chuck. What?

He had not heard Sarah speak. He had heard her spoken to but not heard her respond. He listened again. After a moment, he heard the man—Lawton, presumably—speak again.

"Come, come, Sarah. It is time to wake up. I know the dreams are bad. The hallucinations won't be much better. But it will all pass. And when it does, you will be so eager to…share. You will tell me what I want to know. Come, come, Sarah, this is really simply taking too long. Coombs will be here soon. Damn Coombs, he would build a cabin out of cell service. Talk to me, Sarah, I want to know the answers to my questions before Coombs arrives and starts making...demands..."

Chuck finally heard her. A soft moan. No words, but—he had heard her. Lawton must have drugged her. A truth-serum. But Sarah could resist the serum. She had done it in Burbank. So had he.

None of that mattered now. He needed to get to Sarah. How? He thought of the weak light from the window. Could he get to the window and get a shot off?

The cabin was built on a cinder block foundation. It had a front porch, also standing on cinder blocks, but on pillars, one pillar on each front corner. There were steps on the front of the porch, but none of the side where Chuck was. Chuck eased himself up onto the porch. He stopped once his weight was resting on there, hoping it would make no sound. It didn't. The night was still. Staying as low as he could, he moved deliberately to the window.

"Sarah, Sarah. Oh, you are shivering. I have been so intent on you that I have neglected the fire. Let me see to that, while you rouse yourself." Chuck did not hear Sarah respond, but that might have been because he was scrambling quietly back off the porch. There was a woodpile under a wooden lean-to on the opposite side of the porch and Chuck heard Lawton striding toward the door.

At just that moment, the air was rent by a strange, yodeling cacophony, a mixture of baby cries and yelps and howls. Chuck jumped involuntarily. It was the howling of a coyote pack. The sound continued for a little while as Chuck dismounted from the porch and crawled underneath it. Lawton came out onto the porch and stood and listened to it for a moment. Through a crack in the floor, Chuck saw him smile at the sound—a feral smile. For a second, Chuck expected Lawton to howl. But then Lawton went down the steps and over to the lean-to. As he gathered up pieces of firewood, Chuck got out from under the porch and stood, the pistol pointed at Lawton's back.

For a moment, the upwelling of horror and despair he felt when he threatened Coombs returned. Chuck tightened his finger on the trigger, aiming for the left side of Lawton's back, for the heart. One shot and it would be done. Lawton would be dead and Sarah would be safe. Chuck could do it. One final contraction of his finger and it would be over. _Kill him._ One final contraction. One final. One. _Kill him_!

Chuck felt his finger begin to uncoil. There had to be another way. He could just wound Lawton. Maybe.

Lawton must have heard something, felt something. He spun and hurled a small piece of firewood at Chuck. Chuck did not anticipate the movement, and he pulled the trigger involuntarily. The shot shattered the stillness of the night. Lawton's aim was remarkable. The piece of firewood hit Chuck in the forehead like a hammer. He stumbled and fell to his knees. He heard Lawton vault onto the stairs, heading back into the cabin. Chuck's shot missed. _A gun, he's going for a gun_.

Chuck forced himself to get on his feet and then he leaped up onto the porch. Lawton had just gone through the door. Chuck's vision was blurry. He realized the firewood had split open the skin on his head. He was bleeding from the gash.

He wiped his eyes as he ran through the door, using his still-bandaged, non-gun hand. Lawton had reached the sink on the other side of the main room. He reached for a shelf over the sink—a gun. Chuck felt the Farm take over. He stopped, extended his pistol using both hands, gently blew out a breath and he fired. He hit Lawton in the spot he had aimed at outside, in the back, in the heart. If he let Lawton turn around, he or Sarah would die.

The gunshot was deafening inside the small cabin. Lawton stumbled backward. He never managed to turn around. He slumped onto the floor. Chuck stared at him for a moment, at the blood already beginning to coat the floor around him. He did not move. Chuck knew Lawton was dead. He had killed him. Chuck saw a leather bag on the counter. He looked inside and found a scalpel.

He heard Sarah gasp suddenly behind him like she'd been pulled up, heaving, from the bottom of the ocean. He rushed to her. Her eyes were open, but glassy, unfocused. She was still in the grip of whatever drug Lawton gave her. Her expression became horrified. She looked at Lawton, then off to her side. She was talking to him, to Chuck. But as if were beside her, not, as he was, in front of her, cutting her restraints with the scalpel.

Still staring off to her side, not looking at Chuck, Chuck heard her speak clearly for the first time. "I love you, Chuck."

He leaned in, next to her ear, and responded, plaintively. "I love you too, Sarah."

He cut the final restraints and stood her up. She was very much under the influence of the drug. She wobbled. It was going to be a long trek back to the truck. She could stand, at least. But she kept looking around, as if she could not process her surroundings. Chuck grabbed the vial off the counter and put it in his coat pocket. Then he sat Sarah back down and dressed her, socks, boots, jacket and cap. He grabbed her phone and weapons, stowing them on himself wherever he could. Then they left the cabin.

}o{

They finally made it to the truck. Sarah had been able to walk a bit, but Chuck had carried or half-carried her the whole way. He got her in the cab and buckled in. He turned the truck around at the first spot he could, and they began down the mountain.

Sarah had babbled all the way to the truck. Most of it made little sense. Chuck could tell that whatever the hallucinations she was suffering involved, they were unpleasant. By the time they reached the truck, the babbling had stopped. She had mentioned his name over and over. But as he put her in the cab, she mentioned Carina.

"Sarah, how do you feel?" It was as though the question touched something in her. Galvanized her. She sat up straighter, although her eyes remained unfocused.

"How do I feel?" She spoke clearly, slowly, and smiled dreamily. "I'm in love with my partner... but I don't know how to be in love. I can't even...say the words to him…Carina, I love him...so much. I'm afraid of how I feel, but I am...even more afraid of getting it all wrong...ruining it. He knows about me, Carina, and he still loves me…He actually loves me anyway…How is that possible?" It was strange: Sarah was hallucinating but talking almost conversationally. Chuck wondered if Carina had been recently on her mind.

The whole situation was unreal; it felt wrong to Chuck. Sarah had just told him something he'd been desperately hoping was true and desperately longed to hear—and yet she had not told him. "Sarah, you are under the influence of a drug. It might be best if you tried to be still, be quiet, try to rest."

Long pause. Sarah wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand.

"See, Carina…for one thing, I don't know how to be in love _and_ be on a mission. So how can I be in love with my _partner_?" Sarah's eyes were still glassy. Her tone was breathless. "I prepare for missions by shutting myself off, shutting myself down. I cannot allow myself to feel anything. I contract the world to what I can see through a scope. I contract myself so tightly that I can barely breathe...so tightly I cannot…feel…"

Sarah's chin fell onto her chest. Chuck thought she was finished talking. He could hear her breathing, slow and deep.

But then her head came back up. "No, Carina...Bryce doesn't count. When I was with him, I did not have a partner I loved. I could…contract…whatever I felt for Bryce…shut it off. Control it. I can't do that with Chuck. When I am with him, my heart takes orders from _his_ heart…not from... _my_ head…"

She was silent for a while, then she added softly. "He would be better off...if he never met me….He should be somewhere else...doing something else…with…someone else. Maybe I should let…Parks…let Chris...take him, have him. She is a spy…but she is also…a real girl.

"I am so sorry for Chuck—so sorry he is in love with me. How…can I...feel so sorry about the…greatest thing…that has…ever…happened to me, Carina?"

Her chin fell again. He heard her breathing regularize. She was asleep.

}o{

What was Chuck supposed to do with all of that?

She had told him all of it believing she was talking to Carina, not to him. He was a witness told by a judge to disregard testimony he had heard but that was…inadmissible. He now knew things he was not supposed to know. Sarah had told him things she had not really told him. It was like he had eavesdropped on a phone call to Carina.

He had felt guilty for a long time about pushing Sarah when they had been dosed with truth-serum in Burbank. He did not know whether she had been trained to resist it, and it was clear, while they were in the hospital trying to help Ellie, that she had not been trying to resist it. She had told him how sorry she was about it all. But he knew what she was mostly trying to say was that she was sorry that she had come into his life—into the life of Chuck Bartowski.

He knew that his mission objectives in Burbank dictated that he should have asked Sarah about Fulcrum and about Bryce. But Lou was in the picture, and Chuck was seriously thinking about quitting and pursuing something with Lou. He needed to know if Sarah really felt about him as he thought she might, hoped she might. Mission be damned. So, he'd asked. And, when she answered, he'd known she was lying, that she could lie despite the serum. She could resist it, and did. Still, she did have feelings for him. But the mission, the job, was her top priority. That was as bad, maybe even worse, than if she'd told him truthfully that there was nothing there, no real feelings. Because if he were still less import to her than her mission, then that meant he was not important to her as he wanted to be. It meant the interminable cover dating would continue.

So, the next morning he'd decided he was going to end the cover dating, break up with her. He would see what might happen with Lou. He wanted Sarah—but what good was it to go on wanting what you knew you could not have? Yes, he would have lies to walk back with Lou, and she might not get over them, might not give him a chance. But Sarah was not going to give him a chance. To her, he was an asset. At the end of the day, no matter what she might feel in her heart of hearts, that was all she would allow him to be. Of course, she was technically his asset—but he'd forgotten about that long ago, except when talking to Casey or during meetings with Graham and Beckman. Sarah was not able to forget that where he was concerned. She was a spy in a way he had never been, and never would be.

It was past time for him to get out of the spy life. So, he began the process. He went to the Weinerlicious and he ended the fake relationship.

He hadn't lied exactly when he told Sarah he had a list, a list of things he hadn't done that he needed to do. But the list was Chuck Carmichael's, not Chuck Bartowski's. And the first thing he needed to do was to get off the unmerry-go-round of their cover relationship.

Now, it was like his question in Burbank had been answered. But he shouldn't have asked the question then. He didn't ask now. His question about how she felt had not been a question about her emotional state. He could not unhear what he had heard. But he would have to do his best not to let it steer his actions unthey had a chance to talk. The last thing he wanted to do was spy on the woman he loved. Even if he had done so for months in Burbank.

}o{

Chuck pulled into the driveway of the safe house. He got Sarah out of the truck and took her into the house and to her bedroom. He put her gently on the bed and pulled off her boots. He covered her up. As he walked into the kitchen and took out his phone to call Parks, she came through the door. When she saw him, she ran her eyes up and down him and then threw herself into his arms.

"Thank God, you are safe, Chuck! Sarah?"

"She's in the bedroom. She's ok, but under the influence of a strong truth-serum. I have the vial." He pulled it out of his coat pocket. Parks picked it up and looked at the label.

"I heard rumors that Fulcrum had developed a new serum, but I wasn't sure it was true. It's supposed to provoke hallucinations, bad ones at first, but then ones that dispose you to share, answer questions. If you are asked." Parks shifted her focus from the vial to Chuck, and Chuck glanced at the floor. Parks looked at Chuck speculatively, then she put the vial down and went to Sarah's room. Chuck followed. Parks sat down and took Sarah's pulse, pulled her eyes open, and listened to her breathing.

Parks slumped a little as tension drained from her. "I think she'll be ok, although she may sleep for a long time. I had lots of training with these serums at the Farm. This one is new, but it seems only to be a stronger truth-agent, not a poison."

Chuck crumpled in the one chair in the room and stared exhaustedly at Parks.

"So, Chuck, Lawton?"

"Dead. I shot him." Park's gaze divided somehow, revealing that she both knew that had to be true and wanted it to be false.

"You, Chuck, the guy who barely passed my course at the Farm, you killed one of the world's deadliest hitmen."

Chuck shrugged, his face darkening. "Don't make too much of it. I was lucky. He never realized I was there until it was too late. He was…overconfident, I guess." Parks nodded slowly, frowning. She was silent for a minute, studying him.

"You look frightening, Chuck. Do you realize that your face is all bloody? The wound to your head has stopped bleeding. But between that, and the dried blood on your face and your hands, you look like an extra in a B horror movie. Go wash up. I'll take care of Sarah." Parks seemed to realize that her attempt at gallows humor was more gallows than humor, and her weak smiled collapsed as she finished. She quickly turned back to Sarah.

}o{

Chuck went into the bathroom. What he saw in the mirror shocked him. His face was smeared with dried blood, and there was a caking of it around the wound to his forehead. His hands were covered in dried blood too. He looked like a corpse.

He carefully unwrapped his other hand. When he got to the cloth next to his torn palms, he wet it a bit so that came loose more easily. He had multiple splinters in both palms; he could tell that once he'd washed his hands. The skin of his palms was torn in places and badly abraded everywhere else. He didn't think any bones were broken, but as the adrenaline wore off, he could feel his hands aching again, and he could feel them stiffening. He washed his face and cleaned the wound on his forehead.

When he finished, the sink was covered in reddish-brown, bloody water. He wiped it down as well as he could with a clean towel. A spray bottle of bathroom cleaner was under the sink, so he grabbed another clean towel and scrubbed with it.

When he finished, he looked at himself in the mirror again. Did he know that man? Cleaned up, he looked like he had been resurrected.

For the first time in his life, Chuck felt like less like his father's and more like his mother's son.

}o{

He went back to Sarah's room and sat back down in the chair. Parks had taken off her coat and shoes, and she was sitting on the bed with her head in her hands.

"So, Chris, Coombs?"

"Graham sent a team of cleaners to the mine by helicopter. He then called local law enforcement and gave them their marching orders. A couple of state patrolmen came and took Coombs into custody a little while ago. Graham says the situation is under control, although I have no idea what they are going to tell as the official story or how things will go down at the compound.

"I am under strict orders to call and tell him about you and Sarah. When I told Graham what had happened, and where you had gone, I could tell from his tone he did not expect to see either of you again. At least there's some good news to tell him." Parks bent down and picked up her shoes. She grabbed her coat from the bed. She looked at Sarah, who still hadn't stirred.

"I'll call him now. Find out what he wants to do about Lawton. Lawton's body." She stopped by Chuck's chair. She put her hand to his face, rubbing her cheek softly with her fingers. "I wish I had gotten clearer, sooner, Chuck. About you and about me." Her eyes clouded, grew stormy and damp. She left the room.

Chuck moved over to the bed, taking the place Parks had occupied. He reached out and adjusted her blankets. She shifted position and her eyes opened just a bit. She giggled lazily, then whispered secretly, "No, Carina…no, we haven't….not _yet_. And I solemnly promise…when it happens…I will tell you…nothing." She smirked and settled back into her pillow. Chuck shook his head, smiling.

A little knowledge was a maddening thing.

}o{

Chuck walked into the kitchen. Parks was sitting at the table, a bowl of left-over chili in front of her, beside her phone. "Graham was relieved, really relieved, to hear that you and Sarah were ok. He knows that the mission was compromised somehow, by someone. He's putting together a list of people who were involved in the mission or knew anything about it. There weren't many. Some analysts. A few agents who worked with me in Europe. There's also your mom."

"I think we can eliminate her. And she would not talk to anyone."

"I didn't mention her to Graham. But we must at least keep her in mind. We need to know how she knew what our mission was, how it involved Lawton." Parks was insistent but she was also trying hard not to overstep.

Chuck nodded. "I agree. I never know how she knows so much. I've asked but, surprise, surprise, she never answers. She and I are going to have to have a serious talk when I get back to DC."

It was Parks' turn to nod. "When Sarah wakes up, we'll see if she learned anything from Lawton. Why don't you get some rest? Take some painkillers. You head and your hands are going to start hurting—a lot. I'll see to Sarah, and hold down the fort."

Chuck grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge. Parks grabbed her bag and took out a bottle of aspirin. She shook several into his hand, wincing when she saw his palm. Chuck took the pills and swigged some water to wash them down. Parks put her hand on his wrist. "Sit down. You need to get those splinters out. It won't take long." She grabbed the first aid kit from atop the fridge and sat back down. She moved her chili aside. Chuck extended his hands.

"Yeah, but you know I have a low pain threshold."

Parks looked at his hands, palms-up on the table, and at his head. "Right. You are the biggest baby the Farm has ever seen." She sighed and shook her head. Carefully, expertly, she bandaged his hands.

}o{

Parks had finished with Chuck's hands and was wiping hers clean when her phone rang. "Parks, here. Yes. What? How is that possible? Huh? Really? Ok. Ok. Yes, sir."

Chuck waited to hear the news. "Lawton's body wasn't in the cabin. The state troopers who took Coombs never reported in. Their car was found, empty. Coombs is gone, too."

* * *

 **A/N2** Tune in for more of the _His, Hers and Ours Mission_ next time. Involuntary confessions will have consequences. And other stuff. The dead will rise to walk the earth. Zombies. Vampires. Werewolves. Ramp festivals. (That last one is really scary.)

Just kidding.

Well, not about the consequences of the confessions.


	12. Chapter 12: The Foreign Terrain of Now

**A/N1** The final chapter of _The His, Hers and Ours Mission_. Some things get tied up, but there are loose ends that will string us along for a while.

The chapter title is borrowed from the final song on Matt Stalker and Fables' gorgeous chamber-folk album, _Knots_. You can hear the song on YouTube.

Thanks so much for reading and responding. I have been able to respond to almost all the reviews and PMs and will keep working on that.

Don't own Chuck.

* * *

 **Turned Tables**

 _The His, Hers and Ours Mission_

* * *

Sunday, January 11, 2008  
Romney, West Virginia  
CIA Safe House  
1:37 am

* * *

CHAPTER 12 The Foreign Terrain of Now

* * *

Parks sent Chuck a searching look. Chuck threw up his hands. "I don't know what that means, Chris. But I do know that Lawton was dead. He was dead before he hit the floor. I'm not insisting on this because I'm proud of it—just because it is true. Why would anyone want Lawton's _body_? Like that guy wasn't coyote creepy alive…" Chuck stopped himself. He had killed the man.

"Chuck!" Sarah screamed his name from the bedroom. Chuck ran to the room, ran to her. He got to the door as she was screaming his name a second time. She was sitting up, rigid, her eyes filled with tears. When she saw Chuck come through the door and click on the light, she looked lost for a moment, then so profoundly relieved that she began weeping as she threw herself out of the bed and into Chuck's arms. She hugged him harder than he had ever been hugged in his life. He hugged her back just as hard. Parks had come into the room—but, seeing them, she backed out silently, paused for a second to watch them, and then turned and went back toward the kitchen. Chuck saw her enter and exit in the mirror over the dresser.

"Chuck!" Sarah pushed him away from her for a moment and looked at his chest. She put her hand there and moved it, staring in wonder, still weeping silently. After a moment of rubbing his chest, she came to herself. She stepped back a bit and wiped her eyes.

"You're…you're ok. I'm confused, Chuck." She looked around herself at the room. "How did I get here? I was in…a cabin…with Meeks Lawton." She shivered. "What happened, Chuck?" As she asked, she saw her notice the wound on his forehead and his bandaged hands. Gently, she took his hands in hers. She gazed into his eyes.

"I found you." He gazed back into her eyes and then glanced away.

"But what about Lawton? He had me bound to a chair. He gave me an injection…a truth-serum. That's the last I remember. Well, the last thing I remember I am…sure of. Talk to me, Chuck."

"I found you." He dropped his eyes.

"You said that. How did you get me out of there?"

"I…shot Lawton. I killed him. I had to, Sarah. He got a gun." Chuck whispered the final words.

Sarah stiffened as Chuck spoke. Chuck felt it, saw it.

" _You_ killed him?" She dropped his hands.

Chuck sighed. "Yeah, I did. I get it. It seems…unlikely…"

"No, Chuck," Sarah said, "that's not it. You're the guy who won't stay in the car; I know…what you can do. But, I also know what you _can't_ do. You aren't a killer. You aren't. You aren't…wired that way."

"No, Sarah, I'm not. But I won't let anything happen to you. I am wired that way. Don't you understand that, yet? I wasn't pretending that in Burbank, when I wouldn't stay in the car. I'm not pretending now. You are…you are _everything_ to me."

Sarah blushed even as she frowned. She refocused. "Tell me what happened at the mine…and after. Tell me all about it."

They sat down side-by-side on the bed. Chuck told her what happened from the time he last heard her over the comms.

Well, he told her most of it. The threat against Coombs in the truck—he that left out, as well as getting sick after it. He also left out Sarah's conversation with hallucination-Carina in the truck, and her comment to hallucination-Carina when he put Sarah to bed.

Sarah listened carefully without asking questions, but gently took Chuck's hand when told her about what happened in the mine. As he told her the rest, she continued to hold his hand, stroking the top of it. She held her breath when he told her about Lawton. He ended the story when he got her to the truck.

As he finished, Chuck swallowed hard a couple of times, blinking. The thought of what might have happened to Sarah had gripped him, terrified him all over again. He wanted to hold Sarah but he was not sure what she was thinking or feeling. But he would settle for his hand in hers.

They sat together without talking for a little while. Sarah's eyes began to droop.

"Sarah, you still need sleep. Let's get you to bed. Ok?"

She nodded. He helped her slide under the blankets. "I guess that rush of adrenaline is gone. I must've remembered my hallucination. That sounds weird, doesn't it? You were shot…in the chest…I couldn't reach you. I could only…talk to you. But wait! Chuck, you were there, weren't you, when I hallucinated that? I told you that…" She stared at him from the pillow. He looked at the blankets.

Silence.

"Chuck, _Carina_ wasn't here, was she?"

Chuck shook his head slightly.

Sarah blushed. "Oh." She closed her eyes tight for a moment. Chuck could tell she was either fighting for or fighting against a memory. Again: "Oh."

She rolled over, away from him, blushing again. Chuck turned and clicked the light off. He was reaching out to the grab the door to close it when he heard her voice, small and unsure. "It was truth-serum, Chuck. I couldn't resist it."

"I know."

He heard her shift, roll back toward him. "Stay until I fall asleep, please." He went back and sat down on the bed. She patted the spot beside her. "Lie with me, Chuck."

"Sarah?

"Yes?"

"We need to talk."

"I know. We always do. We will. Later."

}o{

Chuck felt the exhaustion of the day claim him. He hurt all over, despite the painkillers.

He stared at the ceiling

He killed a man. Yes, there seemed to be some doubt about that, but Chuck knew he killed Lawton. Chuck also knew that in the same situation, he would do it again. He'd always wondered if he had it in him to pull the trigger if it really mattered. He did.

It had been a day of knowledge for Chuck—knowledge of himself and of Sarah. The self-knowledge was bitter, as self-knowledge almost always was. The knowledge of Sarah was, so far, at least, unactionable. _Who said knowledge was power?_ A page of text blinked into Chuck's mind, its focal point these words: "…he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow..." _Great, just great._ Stupid photographic memory. Forgetting would be a luxury.

He fell asleep.

}o{

Chuck woke up and checked the clock. He'd been asleep a few hours. It would be dawn soon.

Sarah was snuggled against him, as close as her being beneath the blankets and him above them would allow. He watched her face for a moment, peaceful, content, without any trace of self-consciousness. What he wouldn't give to see her face like that when awake! He knew he never really had. She was a waking contradiction—at once the most self-conscious person he'd ever known, and the most in denial. She saw and didn't see, felt and didn't feel, knew and didn't know. It was the cost she paid to live the life she had lived, a life that began even before the CIA.

He slipped out from under her arm without waking her up. As he stood and stretched, the toll of yesterday rushed upon him. Damn. He was sore. His aches ached. His head hurt. It was difficult to open and close his hands.

He needed more painkillers.

He walked toward the kitchen, but was surprised to find Parks sitting on the couch in the living, her coat off but covering her legs. Her shoes were off, askew on the floor. She was holding her phone in one hand and coffee in other. She nodded toward the kitchen. "More coffee in there. I just made another pot."

Chuck followed the scent and poured himself a large mugful. The bottle of painkillers was still on the counter and he took a few, washing them down with coffee. He walked back into the living room and sat down in a recliner. It was nearly worn out. He sank into the seat, for a moment worried that the recliner would ingest him. Parks, watching, laughed. She looked worse than she had when they first saw her at the church building. The dark rings around her eyes were darker, deeper.

"Were you up all night, Chris?" Chuck saw that she was tempted to deny it, but then she admitted it, nodding her head.

"I…I just couldn't sleep. Stuff on my mind. Um…This weird shit with Lawton's corpse and Coombs. I've been hoping to hear something." She waved her phone. Her voice was thin and guarded.

Chuck recalled her face in the dresser mirror, when he and Sarah were embracing.

"Chris, I'm sorry about how things…worked out for us. Wrong time and wrong place." He felt bad about it all.

"There's no need to apologize, Chuck. We both thought we knew what we wanted. I wanted the spy life. You wanted a normal life. I was wrong…" Chuck opened his mouth to say something but Parks went on. "I know you never looked at me like you look at her. I never imagined she could look at anyone the way she looks at you—when she thinks no one is watching. She is in love with you, Chuck. The Ice Queen in Love." She shook her head, bitterly. "That sounds like the title of one of those sword and sorcery books you like so much." Her bitterness seemed to exhaust itself in that remark. She smiled tiredly.

"I wish you two the best. You know that Graham is dead-set against the two of you as partners. He's not said so to me, but it's there in between the things he's said, and it's there in his decision to send you two to me. I don't know what he thought would happen, but he was hoping something would, that I would…complicate things between you.

"If Graham is against you two as partners, imagine how he will be if—when—he knows you are a couple. Apoplectic. He obviously suspects something like that, or he wouldn't have sent you to me. But, don't worry, Chuck, I won't say anything. In fact, I sent my resignation in last night, electronically. Effective as soon as the mission here wraps up. I'll be in DC for a while after I finish here. Debriefs and paperwork. Making decisions. You can find me, if you…want me." She put down her coffee cup and her phone and sat back, staring down at her hands.

The first light of dawn was showing through the window. Snow was falling again. Chuck looked past Parks and watched the snow fall for a little while. He was lost in the snowflakes for a little while, envious of their unmarred, weightless perfection. He felt marred, heavy and imperfect.

Eventually, he realized Parks was sobbing softly. He looked at her and, after a beat of hesitancy, opened his arms. She got up and curled into his lap, her head against his shoulder. He stroked her hair as she continued to sob.

"I'm glad you are getting out, Chris. But you are wonderful—smart, capable, funny, beautiful. You will shake all of this off and find your way, find what you want."

She sat back and wiped her eyes. "Thanks, Chuck. I'll be…ok. Will you? You killed a man last night. I know you. That will take its toll on you, once the reality of it settles on you. How long can you live this life, even for her?" She was staring straight into his eyes and he could not turn away.

He looked back out at the snowflakes. "I honestly don't know. Before last night, I would have said 'for as long as it takes'. But I don't know how long that will be. And I don't know how long I can last. I…believe I can live with last night. But I…don't believe I can live with many more nights like that. I want Sarah either to choose me or choose this life. But the longer I live it, the more compromised," he paused for a self-mocking huff, "…the more compromised I become, compromised by the life itself. And if I become compromised enough…there'll be no reason for it to seem like an Either/Or any longer. It will just seem like she can have both. I'll start wearing Bryce Larkin's spy shoes. I won't do that."

Chuck felt Parks stiffen. She jumped up, off his lap. He realized that Sarah must be standing there.

"Good morning, Sarah." Parks said, too lightly. No answer. Chuck got up and turned around. Sarah made eye contact with him. He saw hurt but not anger.

"Good morning." Sarah spoke the words. Then she went to the kitchen. Parks put on her shoes and her coat and slipped her phone in a coat pocket. She took a large drink from the coffee cup. "I'm going to my hotel. I will get back with you two in a little while. I will collect my things from the motel. I'm expecting a call from Graham. I hope he'll have some information for us." She put her cup down on the coffee table.

Sarah had poured herself a cup of coffee and she turned around, leaning against the counter. Parks passed her with a nod. She nodded back as Parks left the safe house. Chuck watched the exchange then he carried his coffee into the kitchen, and sat down at the small table.

Sarah watched him sit down. After he did, she stepped to the table and sat down too. She kept her eyes from Chuck as she took a deep breath. She exhaled and met his gaze.

"How much of that did you overhear," Chuck asked, softly.

"Really just the Either/Or stuff. The stuff about Bryce's shoes."

"Parks submitted her resignation last night. She finishes up here and she is done."

She shifted her gaze to her coffee cup. "Do you know that Greek myth, Chuck, the one about Orpheus and Eurydice?" She met his gaze again.

"Yeah, sure, I remember. Which version?"

"I don't know. I'm only thinking about the basic story. We learned about it in high school. Eurydice dies and is translated into the underworld, and her husband, Orpheus, treks into the underworld to find her, free her." Sarah's voice was almost inaudible.

"Oh, yeah, right. Oh! Right." Comprehension suddenly registered in Chuck's tone. "And you are Eurydice?"

Sarah nodded. "Yes. Or sort of. Orpheus finds her there, and he plays his…lyre…so beautifully that Hades' heart is softened. He tells Orpheus he can have Eurydice back, so long as he leaves Hades without looking at her. She follows Orpheus as a Hadean shadow, a shade. He is leading her out. She cannot become a real woman again, a woman of flesh and blood, until she passes beyond Hades. But Orpheus grows anxious, impatient; he cannot hear Eurydice's footsteps behind him. Finally, he looks, and she is whisked back into the underworld, forever to remain a shadow."

Chuck put an elbow on the table and rested his head in his hand. "And…?" He reached for Sarah's hand and she took his.

"And I'm coming with you, Chuck, I'm following you, even if you can't hear my footsteps. I don't want to live in this underworld any longer than necessary. But I can't leave it in one step, like Chris. I need you to be patient, and I know how risky that is. For us both. If I lose you, or if what we have were to collapse somehow into what I had—and didn't have—with Bryce, it would kill me…" She paused, swallowing hard.

"Look, Chuck, I seem dimly to remember a conversation with Carina last night, a conversation I know did not actually take place. I suspect though that I said…things…aloud…and that you heard them?"

Chuck frowned and nodded. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to ask. I asked how you felt, physically, and you took me to be Carina…"

"…Asking about how I felt, emotionally. And I told her." Sarah's smile was brief, but there before it was gone, Chuck was sure.

"Yeah, yeah, you did. Do you…remember what you said?"

"Mostly, yes." Sarah glanced around the kitchen. Then she got up and walked into the living room and stood staring out the window.

Chuck stayed in his chair, but turned it so that he could see her. He waited.

She finally spoke but kept her back to him. "I love you, Chuck. I know that despite not knowing exactly what it means. I'll have to live it to understand it, I guess. But I do know two things it means: when we are on a mission, I cannot keep you within the mission parameters. And when you are with me on a mission, I _feel_ the mission. I cannot shut my feelings off.

"I have been worried about Graham and what he might do—but I admit I have also used that as an excuse, to justify shutting my feelings off during the mission, used it as an excuse to do what I am comfortable doing. But it won't work, it doesn't work. Not in Batumi. Not in Romney. Even if Chris hadn't been here, I'd have ended up kissing you, holding you at some point. And I would have been in love with you every minute, and known it.

"I just need to take this change from shadow to flesh slowly. I need you to be patient. I keep falling back into my old habits—but they don't fit me anymore. I will keep doing it for a while, I'm sure. I'm becoming something, someone else, maybe the woman I was meant to be, whoever she is. The only thing I'm sure of about her," Sarah finally turned and sought Chuck's eyes, "is that she loves you."

Chuck stood up as she walked to him. She had reminded him of Shakespeare's line about lovers. She had told him she loved him while hallucinating a conversation with Carina. She had said 'I love you' with her back turned. And then she turned to him but said it in the third-person. One day she would say while looking at him—and in the first-person. But he could wait. This would do.

He took her in his arms and kissed her, his world contracting to her, her heart, her lips. _This would do._

}o{

Chuck was finishing in the shower and Sarah was putting on her shoes when her phone rang.

They'd allowed themselves to kiss a while longer, before forcing themselves apart. Sarah had almost sprinted to the shower. Chuck went into the kitchen and started washing bowls and spoons. Anything to get his mind off her, freshly kissed and now naked in the shower. He wanted her so much that his hands were trembling. He ended up shattering a bowl when he lost his grip on it. The water was stinging his sore hands and the stiffness made him ham-fisted. Finally, Sarah had called out that the shower was free and he was able to get in. Even on that bleak midwinter day, he stood in the icy water until he got his mind—and the rest of him—not straight, but right.

Sarah answered the phone. "Hey, Chris. You have? Good. What did he say? Today? Alright, we will see you here soon." Sarah ended the call and looked at Chuck as he poked his head out of the bathroom.

"What did she say?"

"Finish up and I will tell you. It'll be a little while before she gets here."

Chuck wrapped a towel around his waist and slipped from the bathroom to his bedroom. Sarah saw him and then cursed herself, as her temperature, cooled by her shower, began to rise again. She remembered all at once explaining to Carina that she had not _yet_ slept with Chuck—and the heat of her embarrassment added to her overall heat. Parks needed to arrive soon or…things…were going to get out of…hand. Even though she had not understood that she was saying the things she said to Chuck, the fact that she had said them and he heard them made her feel like shackles had been taken removed. That was good. That was bad. She was burning up, burning down—burning.

Chuck came out of his bedroom—mercifully and unmercifully fully dressed. "So, what did Chris say?" He was wrapping his hands with gauze. Sarah helped him finish up. "They're feeling better. More limber." Sarah did not meet his eyes.

"Um, Parks'll be here soon. But she talked to Graham. Evidently, although Lawton's body was not in the cabin, there was a very large blood stain, human, on the floor. It is almost certain no one could have bled that much and lived. So, Graham accepts that Lawton is dead. There were tire tracks behind the cabin. Lawton must've parked his car there. The car is gone, so that's another oddity. There were tracks of a second car. At least two people must have gotten to the cabin after we left." Chuck was shaking his head. "What, Chuck?"

"I could've just taken Lawton's car, not walked you all the way back to the truck. I never saw it and I never thought about it. Casey was right, I am a moron."

"You had other things on your mind, Chuck, don't worry about that. The real question is why anyone would go to the trouble of taking Lawton's body. How could they have known that…unless they were there to kill Lawton, maybe to kill Coombs too. Maybe they were at the cabin expecting to make Lawton a corpse, not to find him one already. Lawton let it slip that there was someone else—someone other than Coombs, I'm sure—involved in the trap for us. But nothing he said or did at the cabin suggested he expected to see anyone but Coombs there. Maybe Lawton was using Coombs and someone else was using Lawton. Lawton never seemed all that interested in the guns or the money. He wanted to know what the CIA knew about him. Maybe he suspected that he was or would become a liability, expendable, if the CIA knew certain things…"

Chuck was listening closely. He had the nagging feeling that there was something here he ought to know or understand. Pieces of knowledge, memory, that were individually clear, that fit together but that maddeningly were stored apart.

Parks walked in, carrying the cold with her. After taking off her coat, and joining them at the table, she told them again about the bloodstain at the cabin and the tire tracks. Sarah told her—and Chuck, since he had not heard it yet—about her conversation with Lawton about their…work.

She finished by talking about Lawton's reference to someone other than Coombs, and then explained her thoughts about what might have occurred. Parks listened closely.

"One thing worth remembering about Lawton," she said as she was processing Sarah's speculations, "is that he was at the top of one food chain and the bottom, or so it seemed, of another. He was one of the people in charge of Fulcrum, but he was a toady of the Ring. We believe the Ring is run by a group of people—Elders, we have heard them called—all of whom are highly placed in the governments of influential nations: the US, China, the UK, and others. So far, we have nothing more than that. There could be lots of reasons why someone at Lawton's level would become expendable. The very fact that we were after him might have been enough, although I don't think that was it. No, there is something else about him he was worried that we might know, something that would get him killed. Frankly, it was very unlike him to keep you alive, Sarah. I was worried that…you would not make it. I was terrified of…what Chuck might find. Lawton was acting out-of-character. I understand that he would find you…interesting, Sarah," Parks flitted a glance at Chuck, "but I'm sure his overriding purpose was to find out if we knew something that would create real trouble for him. He kept you alive for that. Otherwise, he'd have killed you on the ridge without so much as a backwards look."

Chuck glanced over to Sarah. She had seen Parks' glance but seemed more interested in his reaction to it than she was in the glance itself. He smiled and she blinked. She hadn't expected that. She smiled back, a _thank you_.

Parks went on. "Sarah, did you tell Chuck about Graham's orders?"

"No, I never got to it. Other things…came up." Sarah worked so hard to keep from looking at Chuck when she said that that he blushed. Parks saw it and bit her lip. Chuck knew Parks had misunderstood, at least in part, but he was not about to try to explain.

"So, what are the orders?" Chuck waited for an answer.

"Graham wants the two of you back in DC. He wants a meeting with you two tomorrow morning. I'm to finish up here in the next couple of days. Evidently, he's going to give you my Ring work and my files. I suspect that means you will be heading to Europe soon.

"You two need to be careful. This mission was compromised; we know that. We still don't know who did it. Keep your circle of trust as small as you can. And keep Graham out of it as much as possible." Parks stood up. "Agent Walker, Sarah, I'm very glad to have met you, and not just as a fangirl. Getting to know you has changed…my view of myself. Maybe I won't get all I hoped for, but I know it's possible for me to change, to find another life." She and Sarah hugged.

Parks stepped to Chuck. She looked at Sarah—a question—and Sarah smiled and nodded. Parks gave him a gentle kiss on the lips. "Chuck Carmichael, you are a wonderful man. Don't change; stay. And don't let the bastards get you down." She turned toward the door, and, summoning a degree of cheerfulness none of the three believed she fully felt, she smirked and shrugged. "And with a cliché, she slipped away. Good luck, you two." Her tired eyes lingered a moment on Chuck and then she was out the door.

}o{

Sarah put her suitcase in the trunk of the car. Someone from one of the follow-up CIA teams had brought the Camry to the safe house shortly after Parks' left. She got a text telling her it was there. The CIA's version of the personal touch. Chuck came out of the door and put his suitcase beside hers.

"His and hers. You know, Sarah, I'd like more _ours_." She looked at him but said nothing. They got in the car, she to drive, he to ride.

They were quiet for most of the drive. Each had a lot on to think about. Each was fidgety. Really fidgety. It was a long couple of hours.

Sarah drove them to Chuck's apartment. He got out to grab his suitcase. She popped the trunk and got out too. He grabbed his suitcase and then stared at her when she grabbed hers. She smiled at him and closed the trunk. He started inside and she followed him.

The doorman—it was Derrick, and he gave them a Cheshire Cat smile—welcomed them home. On the elevator, Chuck was looking at Sarah, but she did not look at him. She followed him out of the elevator and to the door of his apartment. He chuckled and shook his head as she waited for him to open the door. He was unsure what was happening, but willing to play along.

When she got inside, she put her suitcase near the end of the couch and turned to Chuck. He was bent over, untying his shoes. She toed hers off. She walked toward him, her eyes locked on his. He licked his lips in nervous excitement.

"Ah, Sarah, how many dates have we had, officially? I mean are first dates _additive_? Have we had two dates, or have we had one first date, and then another, but still haven't managed a second either time? I mean, you know, third dates…and so on and so forth and…"

"Chuck."

"Yeah?"

"Shut up and take me to our bed."

He did.

]o{

His, and hers, then hers, and his. Theirs. A sighing interlace of lips and limbs. His hands everywhere on her. Her lips, his flesh. Her hands everywhere on him. His lips, her flesh. Hers, and his, and then his, and hers. Theirs.

They made love all the afternoon and into the evening. They had so much to say to each other—but neither needed a word. Each gave wordless answers to unasked questions. Answering over and over.

As darkness fell outside, Chuck swept his gaze up Sarah's naked body. She was on her stomach, still breathing hard, her eyes closed, her lips stretched in an unselfconscious smile. She opened one eye and looked at him, arching her eyebrow.

He asked one question. "Our bed?"

She stretched her arms out, one across him, her hand reaching for the edge of his side, the hand of her other arm reaching the edge on her side. She closed her eye and her smile grew. She felt...special.

"Our bed."

* * *

 **A/N2** A good place to finish the mission, I reckon. The next chapter will be another DC interlude. It will include the meeting with Graham, Burbank flashbacks—and a family dinner at Frost's. Fun will be had. After the interlude chapter, we will begin the next mission: _The_ _Circus Days and Nights Mission._ Tune in! Tell your friends! Make popcorn!


	13. Chapter 13: Meet the Family

**A/N1** Back in DC. An episodic and talky interlude.

I've had Dorothy Parker's poetry on my mind lately, as you know. (I mentioned her a couple of chapters back.) This bit, especially, "…good and bad/are woven in a crazy plaid." It's from her terrific poem, "The Veteran".

Thanks for reading and responding. I've gotten so many fun comments on this story. Few things make writing more rewarding than moving others to write. I hope to continue to hear from you.

Don't own Chuck. Or coffee, although I ought to be part-owner by now. Alas.

* * *

 **Turned Tables**

 _Interlude_

* * *

Monday, January 12, 2008  
Washington, DC  
Chuck's Apartment  
6:25 am

* * *

CHAPTER 13 Meet the Family

* * *

Sarah's phone rang. She woke up and reached for it. She kept it on her nightstand. But there was no nightstand where she was reaching.

And then she remembered where she was: she was in Chuck's bed, in their bed, and he was asleep beside her. As she reached for the phone, he had reached for her and she felt his hand, soft against her hip. She realized her feet were against his—and warm. That never happened. She went to sleep with cold feet and woke with cold feet. Not this morning. It was a small thing, maybe, but it moved her almost to tears.

She had made love to Chuck, repeatedly, gloriously. Made _love_ to him. And when they finally stopped, exhausted, spent, she understood what it was to center another person's world and to have that person center hers. She wasn't in her apartment—but she was at home. Home. Not his apartment. Him.

She hadn't had a home since she was a little girl. Really, she never had.

Home. Him. Chuck. She wanted to roll to him and repeat what they had repeated last night. Practice makes more perfect. _Damn phone_.

She found the phone on the floor and looked at the screen. Langston Graham. 6:25 am. One of her least favorite people at one of her least favorite times. Come to think of it, all times between dawn and, say, 11 am were tied for her least favorite time.

She refused the call. Officially, Langley did not open for business until 9 am. Graham could wait. She couldn't. She rolled over and pulled the covers over her head and Chuck's. The movement and the change in the light woke him. She saw relief in his eyes as he looked at her. She smiled so big it hurt.

"No, Chuck, you are not dreaming. And neither am I. This is all happening. Us. And it is happening," she said as she climbed atop him, "right now." The covers lifted with her, leaving her tented above him. Then the covers slipped off her head and settled on her bare shoulders. Chuck looked at her. The look took her breath away. It was a look of discovery, of pure discovery. And in it, she saw herself, caught a glimpse of the woman Chuck saw. That glimpse moved things deep inside her. She shook all over, trembling with happiness and with pleasure.

She began to move and she saw and felt Chuck's answering tremble.

}o{

Later, much later, Sarah returned Graham's call. He was not happy that she had not answered and had not returned his call sooner. After huffing and puffing for a while, he told them to be in his office at noon. She ended the call and told Chuck.

He smiled. "You know, if I am 'sort of' Orpheus and you are 'sort of' Eurydice—doesn't that make Graham 'sort of' Hades?"

She leaned over and kissed the end of Chuck's nose. "No 'sort of' about it. Hades, he is. Tune your lyre, lover boy." She jumped from the bed and headed toward the living room. She returned with her suitcase. Chuck glanced at it—although he was only able to keep his eyes from her for a second. She put the suitcase on the bed, opened it, and grabbed some underwear and clothes. She closed the suitcase and then put it in the bedroom closet. Chuck's brows contracted; he was puzzled.

"You said this was our bed," she noted, pointing at it. He nodded in agreement. "But if it is our bed, then doesn't it need to be in our room, in our apartment?"

Chuck laughed, shaking his head. "So, you are moving in?" He looked hopeful, thrilled.

"No," she said, flattening her look. His face fell, and she giggled. "I moved in last night. Now, I'm putting my things away."

"One suitcase?"

She shrugged as she headed to the bathroom. "Spies travel light."

}o{

As the warm water of the shower cascaded onto her, Sarah trembled again. She had never felt like this. She was so...excited. Still. Last night and this morning she had certainly been aroused—off-the-charts, over-the-edge, may-not-make-it-back-ever aroused. _Oh, dear God!_

But intermingled with that had been her colossal excitement about Chuck, about them. Yes, their future was unclear. Yes, there were stones in their path. But it was their future, their path. Their future. She had told Parks the future was trackless. She knew it intellectually; Ellie had been right when she said it to Sarah that night. _There are no tracks_. But now Sarah _felt_ it. She had a dawning apprehension that she had a life—that she was not just alive.

She had systematically trained herself to think of the future solely in mission terms, surrendering even her future to mission parameters. Her future stretched no further ahead than the completion of the mission. Yet this morning, she woke up without a mission—but with a future.

She had crossed into new territory, foreign terrain. Now. A new day. _Hello, Sarah Walker, welcome to your life!_

Sarah felt so good.

}o{

Graham was not happy to see them. He spent the meeting, when he wasn't glaring at Chuck, studying the two of them together. Chuck did his best to keep from even glancing at Sarah. Chuck even went so far as to call her 'Agent Walker' while he explained the attack at the mine and his rescue of her from Lawton. Graham tapped his fingers together. When Chuck finished, Graham gave him a curt, grudging nod.

"So, how did this mission become compromised? Do you know of anyone who knew anything about this other than the two of you, Agent Parks, and me? Set aside the few support personnel for now. They are all being investigated, but so far nothing has come of those investigations."

Chuck was not going to mention his mother, and he assumed Sarah would not either. They were both silent. "Assuming then that neither of you gave information to Lawton, is there any reason to suspect Parks?"

"No," Sarah said in a sure tone. "Parks was nearly killed, as Chuck was, at the mine. She gave Coombs over to the state troopers. There's really nothing in her behavior that suggests that she should be suspected. In fact, I believe that Agent Parks has…feelings for Agent Carmichael. And I am confident she would not put him in danger."

Chuck watched Graham closely as Sarah said this. He tried to look surprised, but the surprise was forced. He had known about Parks, about Chuck's history with her. If Graham was pretending not to know that, what else might he be pretending? Chuck was feeling worse and worse about Langston Graham. Chuck knew he was up to something—the mission to Batumi proved it. Graham knew that Chuck knew. But so far, his only sallies against Chuck seemed about his partnership with Sarah, not about Chuck's knowledge of questionable dealings with Luka Beridze.

But the closer Chuck looked at Graham, the more he noticed that there was an undertone of anxiety in his bearing that had not been present—or noticeably present—in earlier meetings with him. It might have been nothing other than worry about the CIA being infiltrated by the Ring. Chuck wasn't sure. But his bad feeling about Graham got worse. There were currents and crosscurrents at work here and Chuck only knew about some of them.

"Ok, so if not either of you, not Parks, then…me?" Neither Chuck nor Sarah responded immediately. "You must be joking. I am Langston Graham, Director of the CIA. Why would I work against myself?"

Sarah jumped in. "No, Director…I was," she looked at Chuck, "…we were just thinking about who else it could be. We thought your question was…rhetorical. It was…wasn't it."

Graham scowled. "Of course, of course, it was. I will make sure the investigations of the support staff are quite thorough. We have to plug this leak."

Sarah nodded. "So, do you have a new mission for us?"

"Soon, but not yet. We are following out a lead in recent chatter on the Continent. For now, the two of you can stand down. I would like you to comb through Parks' paperwork on the Ring. My assistant has copies for you. Pick them up as you leave."

Graham now seemed in a hurry to usher them out, and they had no wish to stay longer. When they got out of his office, each looked at the other and shrugged almost imperceptibly. That had been a strange debriefing. They got the paperwork they needed from Graham's assistant.

}o{

They left Langley together in Chuck's BMW. They stopped by Sarah's. She ran inside to pick up a few things. When she came out, she put her stuff on the passenger seat of the Porsche. She drove to a nearby coffee shop she liked. Chuck pulled in beside her. They each had copies Parks' paperwork. They intended to find a quiet corner to read.

Just as they sat down, Chuck's phone rang. He looked at it. "Mom. Can you order for us? Americano for me, please." He stepped out of the shop to take the call. It was a cold day, and he zipped his jacket as he answered.

"Hey, Mom!"

"Charles. You are back." Typical of his mom. An assertion, not a question.

Chuck answered anyway. "Yeah, we got back yesterday afternoon. We just left a debrief with Graham. We stopped for coffee."

"We? You are with Sarah. We? You sound…happy, Chuck. You finally slept with Sarah."

Chuck shook his head—although not for anyone's benefit but his own. Only his mom would say such a thing to her son, say it so matter-of-factly, and still hide the barb, 'finally'. But before Chuck could snark at her in reply, she changed her tone, sounded human, warmer. "Did she tell you how she feels about you?" She seemed genuinely curious, like it was a real question. Like the answer mattered to her.

"Yes, Mom, she did. She told me."

There was a long silence. Chuck could feel the pain beneath the surprise in his mom's voice when she broke the silence. "Good. Good for her. Good. That can't have been…easy for her." Silence, again. Then: "I should tell you, now that this has happened, she admitted her feelings for you to me. Before you two went to Georgia."

Chuck processed that for a minute. "Ok…ok. Why do you sound…surprised?"

His mom cleared her throat. She sounded…emotional? His mom? "Because the hard thing for a spy like her, someone who is all spy, is not _having_ emotions, it is owning them, being able to express them. You distance yourself from them for so long and they start to seem…well, they seem like they are not yours, exactly. Like there is a damn gulf fixed between what you feel and what you say. You start to think that you can no longer put emotion into words…" Chuck felt his chest tighten. His mom's words, although ostensibly about Sarah, were the most self-revealing he had ever heard from her. She was fighting the very battle she was describing—as she described it. Being near Sarah all these months, loving her, gave him insight into his mom that he hadn't ever had.

But she cleared her throat again and her clinical, detached tone returned. "I would like to ask you—and Sarah—to come to dinner tomorrow night. Devon and Ellie are both in town. I thought it would be…nice. I know Ellie likes Sarah."

"Sarah likes Ellie. And Devon. I'll have to ask her, but I will accept, provisionally. If you don't hear from me, expect us. What time?"

"7 pm. Before you go, Chuck. Are you ok, really ok?"

So, she knew about Lawton. So far, Chuck was dealing with it. "I'm alright."

"Just remember, Chuck, that the consequences of this sort of thing can slip up on you. Lean on Sarah. She has been through it. I am here too, if you need me." She sounded almost embarrassed by the final words, as if she knew the fact that she had to offer showed that she had never been quite a mother to her son.

"Thanks, Mom. I hope to see you tomorrow." He ended the call and stood still in the cold. For a woman who hated surprises, his mom was full of them. He hoped Sarah would want to go to dinner, although he had to admit the prospect of it was making his palms sweaty.

When he got back inside, Sarah had her copy of the file open and was reading through Parks' notes. Chuck sat down and pulled the plastic lid off his Americano, then he opened his copy of the file and started to read. But he felt Sarah's eyes on him. "We could do this, Chuck, or we could…go back to bed." Chuck pushed the lid on his coffee and closed the file. They left the shop holding hands. In a hurry.

}o{

Later, they were sitting up in bed, Sarah leaning against Chuck, and humming softly and tunelessly to herself through an easy smile.

"Sarah, the phone, at the coffee shop—that was Mom. She wants us to come to dinner tomorrow night. Ellie and Devon will be there."

Sarah had been half-conscious, rubbing the fingers of her free hand against the sheet covering Chuck's leg. Her fingers stopped and her hand clenched.

"Do you not want to go?" He asked as she turned to face him.

"I do want to go. It's not that. I just have never done the whole _Meet the Family_ thing, you know? I know I have met them all—but not since, well, all this," she gestured at the bed, the bedroom, the apartment, all at once. "I've never met my…boyfriend's…family before." Her face registered wonder and then a hint of sadness.

"Really? No boyfriend ever took you to meet his parents?" Chuck's disbelief pitched his voice higher than usual.

"No. I've never had a boyfriend, Chuck. I never dated much in high school and certainly never dated anyone steadily. Too much moving around. Too many secrets. Since then there's not been anyone steady but Bryce—and we were not boyfriend and girlfriend. Other than 'partners', I never heard Bryce call us anything but 'the Andersons'. But we weren't the Andersons. The Andersons didn't exist."

"Well, you are my girlfriend—if that's ok with you. And that would make me your boyfriend…" Chuck grinned lopsidedly.

"Chuck, I declared that we were dating, exclusively. I moved in…um…summarily. I'm sure I'm on board with being your girlfriend. And by the way, was any of that…too much? The dating? The moving in?" A genuinely worried look crossed her face.

Chuck reached out and brushed her cheek with the tips of his fingers. "No, I've been ready for all of it—boyfriend and girlfriend, exclusive dating, moving in—forever. Since the _El Compadre_. I don't know if you remember, but I implicitly invited you to meet the family, well, everyone but Mom, that night, when I told you about Devon."

"So, Chuck, do _you_ call him Captain Awesome or was that just part of Chuck Bartowski's cover?"

Chuck laughed loudly. "No, not just part of the cover. But Ellie hates that name. For real. I wrote it into Devon's cover just to annoy her, so that she had to let me use it without punching me. Although, to be honest," he rubbed his shoulder, remembering, "she did punch me, a lot, but she waited until you were gone. Devon actually likes the nickname, I think, but he wouldn't dare tell Ellie that."

Sarah joined Chuck's laughter. "Well, I'll leave the nickname at home. I admit: I'm a little afraid of your sister."

"Me too, Sarah, me too." Chuck was still rubbing the spot of some remembered punch to the shoulder.

"Is the dinner formal?"

"No, Mom will be," Chuck said, smiling, "but no one else. Mom doesn't do anything informally."

}o{

Chuck checked off the last item on the short grocery list Sarah had written for him. She'd been very proud of the list—her first in their place. Of course, most of what he had purchased, other than the essentials (eggs, milk, chocolate croissants) had been items for a chocolate soufflé to take to his mom's for dinner.

He'd jokingly referred to it as Truffaut Soufflé. Sarah had chased him from the kitchen, glaring, threatening to get one of her knives. Chuck had run to the bedroom and shut the door. It was only when he apologized again for ruining the soufflé in Burbank that Sarah had been appeased, chuckling as he opened the door to her. She kissed him.

He told her that she needed to understand his trouble at the time. He was not only supposed to have 'flashed' on her deadly turn as a French diplomat, Ilana Truffaut, as he had told her after he bathed the soufflé, but she was under suspicion as a Fulcrum double-agent. When she showed up with a soufflé, and he remembered the Truffaut section of her file, his imagination got overheated. He really had been afraid of her that day, although not as Ilana Truffaut, diplomat-assassin, but as Sarah Walker, possible Fulcrum assassin. It had been irrational, probably (why would she poison Ellie and Devon?), and he got over it. But it had happened.

Chuck paid the man at checkout, grabbed his two bags of groceries and headed back home—back home to Sarah. He laughed to himself, overcome by excitement. Even though he knew dinner with his mom would be a tightrope walk, he was looking forward to taking Sarah, his _girlfriend_ Sarah, to meet his family.

}o{

Three hours later, Sarah was standing with Chuck at the door of a rather nice home in Langley, Virginia. Chuck rang the doorbell. Sarah was standing with her still-warm soufflé in her hands, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. She knew Chuck was nervous too, but not at all to the degree that she was. She forced herself to breathe. She had stopped breathing for a second and gotten light-headed.

She was just getting over the momentary dizziness when the door opened and Ellie was standing there. Sarah knew that Ellie knew about the second first date, but Ellie's grizzly hug confirmed that she had been told or had guessed that Chuck and Sarah's status had changed. Suddenly, Sarah was dizzy again. It was all she could do to stay upright and hold the soufflé with one hand. Chuck grabbed it from her.

"Sis, she's a super spy and well-nigh indestructible, but no one can survive sixty seconds of one of those hugs."

Ellie stepped back and grinned sheepishly at Sarah. "Sorry, Sarah. I'm just…happy. For you both." She grabbed Chuck and hugged him hard. Sarah grabbed the soufflé from him. When Ellie released Chuck, she grabbed the soufflé from Sarah. "What have you brought us, Sarah? It smells heavenly."

Chuck jumped in. "Chocolate Soufflé _Part Deux_." Sarah punched him in the shoulder.

"Hey! That hurt."

Sarah smirked at him. "Not nearly as much as it could have, mister."

Ellie's laughter followed them into the house.

The house was very different from Chuck's apartment—or Sarah's. While Sarah's apartment could pass as a demo kept by the rental manager to show prospective tenants, nothing in it chosen by its occupant, Frost's house was a deliberately crafted product of glass and steel, every detail chosen by its occupant. It was beautiful—but nothing in it had been left to convenience or to chance. It was hard even to stand or sit naturally in it. Everything exerted a constant pressure to _pose_.

Except that pressure seemed to have no visible effect on Ellie or Chuck. Or on Devon, who'd been sitting on the plush, silver-grey couch when they entered the living room. Frost came in. She looked lovely—dressed in a white silk blouse and black slacks. She fit the house and the house fit her. Frost, Sarah realized, had posed for so long that it was now her natural state.

Sarah felt divided—a part of her could resist the pressure to pose, the part of her that identified with Chuck and his sister, but another part of her found posing natural enough, if not as wholly natural as Frost found it. For the first few minutes, it was like Sarah couldn't remember and couldn't forget how she was standing.

After greeting Chuck and Sarah, Frost announced that dinner would be ready soon. She took the soufflé from Ellie and headed toward the kitchen, and then looked back over her shoulder.

"Sarah, could you perhaps give me a hand for a minute?"

Sarah nodded and followed her into the kitchen. She could see the table set in the adjoining dining room. Frost turned on the oven and put the soufflé in. "Is it ok just to put the oven on _warm_?"

"Sure."

"So, Sarah, how are you?" Frost turned her observant eyes on Sarah.

Sarah's first instinct was to deflect, but she swallowed that instinct down. "I'm as good as I've ever been, Mary. I love your son and he knows it. He's my…boyfriend."

"You are already past mere partners, then?" Frost asked the question but then continued without waiting for an answer. "You are now my son's lover." Again, Frost went on without waiting for any reaction. "Are you ready for this, Sarah, really, or are you just grasping at a fantasy?"

Sarah felt anger stab through her. But she wanted the dinner to go well. She wanted…she wanted to be part of this family. So, she mostly ignored her anger and answered as forthrightly as she could. "I don't think I am grasping at a fantasy. Your son is real—after the last couple of days I believe I am something of an authority on that—and he really loves me. I am real. And I really love him. All real, Mary, no fantasy."

"Sarah, I may not seem like it, but I am on your side. I want this to work. My son has cared deeply for one other woman—Julie Roark, back at Stanford. But it is obvious he cares for you so much more. But here is the thing, Sarah. I was, I am a spy. A spy like you. Almost as good in my day as you are now. I fell in love with a good man. He fell in love with me. All real, Sarah, no fantasy. –Or so I thought.

"But I pulled him into my world little by little. It turned out I was more afraid of his bright world than he was of my dark one. I thought it was him getting closer to me, our…intimacy…deepening. After a while, I realized that it was not an increase in intimacy between us, but an increase in his…conformity…to me. I thought we were becoming more intimate. I was really turning him toward the dark." Frost turned away. Sarah thought she saw tears gathering in her eyes.

After resetting her shoulders, but without turning around, Frost continued. "My son is a force of nature. So are you. Of the two, I believe you may be the stronger force. You can do to him what I did to his father, to Stephen. You can make him follow you into the dark. I am not prophesying, Sarah. I am not confusing you with me or Chuck with Stephen. I am just offering you my experience and putting my fear on record. Don't fantasize that you are moving toward him when he is really moving toward you. The two movements can be hard to tell apart. I know."

Sarah thought about Lawton. She thought about Beridze. She felt an instant chill. _Was Frost right_?

Before Sarah could begin to consider the question, Frost turned around, leaned toward her and whispered, "The kids don't know much about the last year or two their father was with them, or about his…condition. Please keep this between us. I would not have mentioned it but I had to say something. I would never have forgiven myself if I had not said something to you. Chuck is too important."

Sarah was dazed; she nodded without really considering the request. At that moment, Chuck walked in, concern visible on his face, obviously worried about what his mom might say. He stopped behind Sarah and slipped his arms loosely around her from behind. She leaned into him and turned her head to smile at him. Frost turned around to face them.

"How are my two favorite agents?" Chuck was joking but Frost and Sarah shared a glance before each forced a smile.

"We are fine, and dinner is ready to serve. Tell Ellie and Devon, please, Chuck." After he left, Frost grabbed one of Sarah's hands and squeezed it, but the kinship she felt for Frost was more discomforting than comforting. Luckily, everyone came into the dining room at that moment, and Frost let go of Sarah's hand to gather up some final items for the table.

}o{

Although it took a little while to overcome the chill of her conversation with Frost, Sarah enjoyed dinner. Ellie and Devon were clearly happy for her and Chuck, and they kept the evening festive and warm. Sarah drank a little more wine than was wise, although she was not drunk.

Ellie and Devon entertained everyone with Burbank stories. It turned out that they were both working as doctors at the hospital the whole time, although they, of course, had not been on staff as long as Sarah believed. The hardest thing for them had been watching the exquisite torture of Chuck and Sarah's relationship.

They were both disposed to believe Chuck—they quickly thought it unlikely that Sarah was a double-agent, but they found her constant denial of her feelings, her obvious feelings, for Chuck confusing, and it created some doubt. They thought she might be denying her feelings because she would be required to betray Chuck. And in one way, Sarah explained, that was true. She believed she lived with the possibility that she could be ordered to kill Chuck or bunker him.

That admission, although all of them had known it beforehand, and although they all realized it would never have happened, still tilted the evening sideways for a while. That Sarah had lived for months believing she might be asked to end the life of the man she loved sobered everyone.

But it also reminded Sarah of the conversation with Frost—and of the possibility that she, Sarah, remained a threat to the man she loved. Even with the wine, the chill of Frost's question bit again at Sarah's heart.

Still, the evening was pleasant and Sarah was delighted to be treated so much as one of the family. When Ellie hugged Sarah good night, she whispered in her ear: "You know, he'll make you my sister if you say the word. He's gone for you, Sarah. You're the one. He'll do anything to make you happy." Ellie had meant all of that in the best possible way, but it disquieted Sarah, especially since Frost replaced Ellie, and gave Sarah a quick hug, and squeezed her hand again. A reminder.

Devon kissed Sarah's cheek and finally said it. "Awesome!" Chuck laughed out loud until Ellie punched him, exactly where Sarah had earlier.

"Hey, again!"

}o{

Chuck had been pleased with the evening even though he had been nervous going in. Except for the few minutes when she had Sarah alone, his mom had behaved. He didn't know if she'd misbehaved during those minutes, but he had a nagging feeling that something had happened. Sarah had enjoyed the evening—but she'd been pensive and inward during any break in the conversation.

By 'misbehave' he did not mean that his mom would try to do anything to hurt Sarah or him. But his mom had a hard time finding the mean between the extremes of maddening dishonesty and brutal honesty. She'd clearly said something to Sarah. The two of them thought he did not see the glance they shared but— _Hey, spy too!—_ he had seen it. Still, he'd wait, if he could, to let Sarah tell him instead of asking.

When they got home, neither felt like sleeping. So, they sat down in the living room. Chuck got up and made them chamomile tea. Sipping the tea, they sat close to each other on the couch. Sarah eventually scooted into his side and lifted his arm around her.

"Chuck, Graham told me—before our first mission—that you never had a Red Test. Is that true or was Graham messing with me?"

"It's true. I never had one. The time for it had come and I was trying my best—is that the right phrase—to get myself to do it. I hadn't been assigned a target but I knew I would be any day. I talked with Chris Parks about it at the time. I had a long, contentious talk with Ellie. I was called to Langley and I expected the assignment of a target. I still don't know what I would have done if that had been what happened. But it wasn't. I was told that my Red Test had been waived. No one explained it to me. I asked Chris. She had no idea how it had happened. I even asked to see Graham, but he refused. So, I got my badge without a Red Test—although that has been kept a secret for the most part. For a while, I thought I should just quit, that I was a pretender or something. But Ellie told me that it was time that horrible test was done away with and that if I succeeded as an agent without it, then there'd be an argument against it for anyone else."

}o{

They fell into silence—avoiding the obvious point that Sarah had passed a Red Test. Sarah knew this wasn't news to Chuck. It had been in her file. But it struck her as another difference between them, between their ways of being spies. Chuck had, until the last mission, been a 'white collar' sort of spy. That had changed. Graham would likely keep sending them on missions where Chuck could be forced to kill. It was one thing for him to have done it as he had with Lawton. It had been a necessity.

But the time would come when he would face choices like the ones she made instantaneously on the ridge above the mine. Could she have wounded those men and still had a chance to keep Chuck and Chris safe? Did that question even enter her mind? She knew Chuck had considered wounding Lawton. Would she teach him to waive such considerations, to kill for the sake of expediency? If she wanted Chuck, if she loved him, shouldn't she just quit?

That was still the question. That was still what Frost was suggesting to her. _"So, you don't see yourself giving it up?"_ Frost had asked that question before Batumi. Sarah didn't answer it then and she still hadn't answered it—not exactly. Yes, she knew she _wanted_ to give it up eventually. But that was the answer to a different question.

She wanted a life, not just to be alive. She liked having a future. But, she had to admit, it created something like agoraphobia. Her life had become an open place—and it scared as well as excited her. Could she be a wife…a sister and a daughter…and maybe someday a mother? Were those things so much as possible for her? And, even if they were possible, did she deserve them? If she claimed them without deserving them, would she be punished for it, would the others who were involved be punished too, like Chuck?

All she knew was that she wasn't ready, wasn't yet able to quit. Chuck knew it too. She needed to figure this out. Frost was right to worry. Chuck had the same sort of worry; he'd shared it with Chris and she overheard it. Sarah had changed. She knew she was still changing. She felt it every time she embraced Chuck or he embraced her. Hell, she felt it a little every time they smiled at each other. But who was changing faster—her or Chuck? Because he was changing too.

}o{

It was almost two weeks before Graham called them in and gave them their new mission.

During that time, Sarah had moved the rest of her things to Chuck's, to their place. She kept her apartment. Not because she was attached to it. The CIA paid for it, as they did apartments for most agents who worked occasionally in deep cover. Keeping it was primarily to keep Graham from finding out about their new living arrangements. They weren't working to hide them, but they weren't just going to tell him either. He would eventually find out, of course. They'd deal with that when it happened.

Although Sarah was worried about Frost's question, she was too wrapped up in Chuck and her new home to spend her time worrying constantly. True, she'd not been able to bring herself to unpack her suitcase yet, but it was in Chuck's closet—open in Chuck's closet, sitting under the empty hangers in her half. She was comfortable living out of her suitcase. After all, she'd done the same thing at her apartment. She needed to be ready to go at a moment's notice.

Sarah was happier than she could remember being.

She and Chuck worked in the apartment, sifting through Parks' Ring files. They took frequent breaks, learning about each other and discovering all the beautiful things they could be.

The one dark spot on Sarah's shining happiness was the onset of Chuck's bad dreams. She had wrestled that demon for years, but she found that sleeping with Chuck—she knew this even in Burbank—greatly decreased the number and frequency of the dreams. But Chuck had begun to wake up in a cold sweat, badly nauseated, shaking. It did not happen every night. But it happened a few times. Sarah held him until his shaking stopped and he could fall back to sleep. She found his nightmares frightened her more than her own.

She'd tried to talk to Chuck about the dreams, to get him to tell her about them. He kept promising that he would. But so far, he hadn't.

}o{

The night before they were going to meet with Graham, Ellie asked Sarah to meet for a drink. Ellie had been out of town and just gotten back, so it was their first chance to see each other since dinner at Frost's. Chuck had plans to visit with Morgan—Martin. They hadn't seen each other since Burbank. So, Sarah invited Ellie over. When Ellie realized what address Sarah gave her, she was overjoyed.

Sarah opened the door and Ellie came in. They hugged and Sarah invited Ellie to take a seat. Ellie sat down but watched Sarah in wonder as Sarah went into the kitchen and returned with two glasses of wine.

"So, you live with my brother now?" Ellie shook her head. "How is that working out?"

Sarah sighed, long and contented. Ellie laughed. "Ok, that may be the only time I have heard a sigh and wanted to say 'TMI'. That good, huh? Oh, wait, _that_ came out wrong. I mean—things are going well?"

Sarah chuckled silently. What Ellie said was amusing but these moments when she and Chuck seemed so clearly siblings always warmed Sarah's heart. "Yes, Ellie, things are good. I'm good. I'm happy."

Ellie extended her wine glass to Sarah and they clinked glasses. "I will drink to that, Sarah." She did. After a moment, Ellie went on. "So, you guys decided not to tell us about this the other night?"

Sarah felt embarrassed. "I asked Chuck not to tell. I knew we were already going to be the focal point of the dinner and that made me nervous. Revealing this would have just been too much for me. We will tell Mary soon—although, knowing her, she may have known since the moment we decided."

Ellie snorted. "That's my mom. Speaking of her, I admit that I came over with an agenda. I wondered if my mom upset you at dinner. You seemed preoccupied after she took you into the kitchen. I know Mom. I guess I should have called, but…well, I prefer conversations like this face-to-face. So, did she upset you?" Ellie paused. When Sarah did not immediately answer, Ellie went on.

"Mom is worried about you two. She likes you, Sarah. Respects you. But, to be frank, Chuck falling in love with a CIA agent hits close to home for her." Ellie paused again, collecting her thoughts.

"You see, Sarah, because I am older than Chuck, and because, let's face it, I am more aware of certain things than Chuck, I knew about the strain between our parents. I eventually figured out what Mom did, but even before that, I knew that whatever she did disturbed Dad and that it caused them difficulties. It wasn't just that she was gone a lot. It was her work. Dad wasn't an agent, but he was…involved…somehow. I sometimes heard them having strange conversations behind closed doors at night. I can't remember now what was said, I just remember thinking that they sounded like they were talking in code. Later, when I knew what Mom did, I realized they probably were." She stopped and looked at Sarah, who was clearly involved in the story.

Sarah nodded. "Chuck's told me almost nothing about your dad. He…um…had a breakdown? And then vanished? That's all Chuck's told me. I can tell it's a painful topic; I haven't pushed."

"Chuck doesn't know much more than that. I really don't either. Dad went to the store to get syrup and he never returned. Our lives changed that day. I never understood Dad's condition. I suspect that my curiosity about it fed into my choosing neurology. Chuck got Dad's gift for gadgets; I decided to chase Dad's curse." Ellie shrugged sadly.

"But back to Mom. She knows that you are not her. She knows Chuck is not Dad. But the parallels must be difficult and alarming for her. She's a brilliant woman, and she does love us in her way, so I would never tell you to ignore anything she says—though maybe I would ask that you forgive her directness—but you should always take what she says about the two of you with a pinch of salt."

"Thanks, Ellie. Yes, what Mary said upset me at dinner." Sarah took a sip of wine before going on.

"Put in general terms, she worries that I am a bad influence on Chuck. That instead of him helping me find a way out of the spy life, I am going to drag him deeper into it. Compromise him irreparably."

A memory of Chuck shaking in the dark after a dream flitted across Sarah's mind. "Your mom thinks she did something like that to your dad…" Sarah took another sip of her wine, all-at-once afraid to make eye contact with Ellie.

Ellie said nothing for a while. She sipped her wine, then put the glass on the coffee table. She sat back.

"What do _you_ want, Sarah? I know you want Chuck—and that's great. But let me ask you this. If Chuck weren't part of the story, if you were just sitting here with me now, buddies, as we are," Ellie grinned, "and I asked you what you want to do with your future, what would you say? Would choosing to stay in the Agency be a no-brainer? Are you a lifer, like Mom?"

Sarah realized that this question was not going to go away. She could not ignore it into irrelevancy. "That's a hard question for me. My entire adult life, more than that, really, has been in the Agency. I was…compromised…by this life without ever being given a chance to consent to it. I was a…killer, Ellie, before I understood what that means. I don't know if this will make any sense, but it is the best I can do: I didn't become a spy by choice and I am not sure I can stop being one by choice as a result…"

Sarah paused, forcing herself to find words, images, something. "It's like being born with blonde hair. That's your natural color. You can, of course, get it colored, dye it. But that doesn't change the fact that you are a blonde. Nothing will change that—except age, I guess."

Sarah stopped and Ellie laughed. Sarah grinned for a second but then became serious again and went on. "That's sort of how I feel. I worry that I can't stop being a spy. I don't want to be a lifer. I want a life—a different life. But I worry that whatever I choose, it'll just be a dye-job. That underneath I will still be and will always be a spy."

Ellie leaned forward and picked up her wine. She swished it gently while she studied Sarah. "I think I understand, Sarah," she said after a while.

"But I wonder if you aren't getting your tenses mixed up. Of course, you can eventually be something other than a spy. Look at you—you are young and beautiful and brilliant and, well, remarkable—you can be whatever you want. It will take time to become something else. Old habits die hard. But they do die. You can change. You will always _have been_ a spy, but that does not mean that you will always _be_ one. Don't confuse the past being fixed with the future being fixed. That's the big difference between the past and the future. One's done, the other, undone. No, I think the real question is this: can you manage to stop being a spy while you are still being a spy? Isn't that the question? Can you rid yourself of old habits while you are still doing what you are habituated to do?"

Ellie stopped herself. She grinned self-consciously at Sarah. "Sorry, I took a lot of philosophy classes—particularly philosophy of mind classes—because of my interest in neurology. I guess _my_ old habits are showing."

"No, it's ok. It helps me. My only…other…friend, Carina, well, she's great. But she isn't up for this sort of conversation. I'm lucky that we are…buddies."

"Yes, we are. And if I know my brother, and if I understood that sigh of yours a little while ago, maybe we'll be sisters one day, too."

Sarah answered, excited and awkward at the same time: "I'd like that, Ellie." They clinked glasses again and segued into a less fraught conversation.

}o{

When Chuck walked into Graham's office with Sarah, he knew they were in trouble. Langston Graham was smiling. A smile on Langston Graham was an alien and disturbing presence. He was standing behind his massive desk. He motioned for Chuck and Sarah to sit.

Once they had, he grabbed a long tube from atop his desk and shook a cylinder of paper from it. He grabbed the paper, unrolling it, then held it toward them, one hand on its top, the other on its bottom.

It was a brightly colored poster. There was a huge, snarling Bengal tiger in the middle of the poster, occupying most of its space. Above it, in thick, fancy red letters, was: _Circus Maximus_. Below it, in yellow-gold letters, was: _The Greatest Show on Earth_.

"Congratulations, _Team Carmichael_ ," Graham's smile veered into a sneer as he used that title, "you two are going to join the circus!"

* * *

 **A/N2** Next time, our intrepid duo heads under the Big Top! Clowns, knives, and Ring agents. Just call me…The Ringmaster! Thanks for reading, all.

It may be a little while before the first chapter of _The Circus Days and Nights Mission_. Bear with me. Other writing projects...


	14. Chapter 14: Coulrophobia

**A/N1** A new mission begins, one that will take us longer than the last, so make yourselves comfortable. We are at the circus, after all, so grab a bag of popcorn or a funnel cake. Find a good seat. Relax. I am Zettel, your Ringmaster, and the show is about to begin. (I'd do some Hugh Jackman flourish-thingy here in silhouette, but, well...I don't own a top hat. Ahem!)

Don't own Chuck. No money made. Yadda yadda, nadda nadda...

* * *

 **Turned Tables**

 _The Circus Days and Nights Mission_

* * *

Monday, February 11, 2008  
Outside of Charleston, South Carolina  
Circus Maximus Camp  
10:15am

* * *

CHAPTER 14 Coulrophobia

* * *

Sarah was perched on a small bed, intently watching Chuck put on his makeup. She was so absorbed in what he was doing that she was, without knowing it, imitating his facial movements as he rubbed the makeup around his mouth. He pursed his lips; she pursed hers too.

She was sitting there, like that, for a beat or two before she realized that Chuck had stopped looking at himself in the small mirror, and was now looking at her reflected in it. She turned red. And turned away slightly. But not before Chuck saw the now-familiar flash of anxiety.

"I tell you, Sarah, you've got it, or a touch of it."

She shook her head. "Do not! Now, what's that fancy term again? What's the medical term for what I supposedly have?"

"Coulrophobia—fear of clowns."

"I am not afraid of clowns, Chuck Carmichael. I'm…well, I'm Sarah Freakin' Walker. I'm. Not. Afraid. Of. Clowns."

Chuck smiled, the red makeup around his mouth foreshadowing the expression. Sarah felt a slight shiver, even as she laughed.

"I get it, Sarah. No one on the planet knows better than I do just how _Sarah Freakin' Walker_ Sarah Walker is. I marvel at and adore you, woman. And I would and have and do trust you with my heart, and with my life. But you are a... _little_ …afraid of clowns. You haven't let me kiss you when I am in full make-up yet without scrunching your eyes shut before I even get to your lips…"

Sarah glared at him, admitting nothing.

He gazed at her in the mirror for a long moment, and she felt her heart singing to her lower abdomen as she always did when he looked at her like that. Or, her wax and melting heart dripped down low into her stomach, each drop spreading warmth…and need. Either way, that look did things to her. The bed was small—but it was adequate. They'd proved that numerous times over the past few days, and again earlier this morning. But as she widened the focus of her consciousness—took in more than Chuck's eyes—she could see the almost complete clown face. Annnndddd….just like that, the heat went down a little, a definite notch below _full boil_.

Ok. Maybe she was a touch…coulrophobic.

She could get past the clown face, sort of, but she'd end up making love to Chuck with her eyes squeezed shut. Not her favorite…position. Much of the beauty of making love to Chuck was seeing it happening in the depths of his eyes, seeing him seeing her. Seeing him lose himself in her, only her.

No, she could remain on… _simmer_ until the clown face came off.

As she looked at him, he laughed. "Besides, you aren't the one who has to be clowning, funny and carefree, while your ninja partner tumbles about and throws knives at you—even while you know she's a _little_ afraid of clowns."

Sarah grinned, then let the grin weight itself into a pout. "You know, Chuck, it's not fair. My costume requires me to do _this_ to my hair," she held out a handful of raven locks, "and to wear _this_ ," she let go of her hair and gestured to and along the shiny black nylon bodysuit she was wearing, "all of which makes you completely crazy—in a good way, I admit. But you wear _that_ ," she threw her hand at his makeup, his ill-fitting white tuxedo, and his giant red shoes with spats, "which makes me a little crazy—in a not-so-good way." She ended with an exclamation huff.

Chuck nodded as he put the last touch on his makeup. "See, I told you. You have… _the fear of clowns_." He laughed evilly and Sarah flinched. Ending the laugh, he smiled inside his now completed red smile, his eyes dancing merrily.

She shook her head. "You are an idiot. But, thank God, you are my idiot." She stood up and led him out of the small trailer that was both their living space and their dressing room.

}o{

In their couple of weeks or so with Circus Maximus, Chuck had fallen in love with circus mornings. As performers, he and Sarah were not expected to do anything to help raise the Big Top, although once it was in place, they had to prep for their act. As he stood watching the tent crew doing their thing, he turned and looked at their trailer.

By the door was a small sign, a cartoon of a beautiful woman on the move, her black ponytail flying, throwing a knife at a clown running awkwardly from her, a top hat in one hand and an open bag of money in the other, trialing bills.

 _Sabre!_

 _(And Chesko)_

was stenciled in a black script beneath the cartoon. The cartoon always made Chuck smile. He planned to make sure the sign went home with them when the mission finished. He and Sarah, Sabre, had fallen into a comfortable routine. A late breakfast, then, if there were no kids to entertain at lunch, a quick act run-through, making sure that the timing remained crisp, and finally a careful prep of Sarah's knives and of Chuck's props. They had one matinee performance in the afternoon and another in the early evening.

"Look," Sarah exclaimed as she started walking toward 'the cookhouse'—a large pavilion-style tent over a group of long, foldout tables. "Flags up. I told you there would still be breakfast." The sun was bright and it was, luckily, unusually warm for February in South Carolina, already in the low 60s. A table on the far end of the tent held metal chafing dishes, two huge coffee urns, a few pitchers of juice, and bottled water in a large cooler. Sarah got to the table, grabbed a tray and some silverware, and opened the first of the chafing dishes, revealing a steaming mound of scrambled eggs on one side, and stacked bacon on the other. She scooped up a ladleful of eggs and a rasher of bacon.

She turned to see Chuck grab his tray. Eating in his makeup was tricky, and sometimes meant a few minutes lost in touch-ups, but it was usually his best bet, especially since the clowns were often recruited to spend some of lunch entertaining visiting groups of children. Chuck, Chesko, had proven quickly to be more than Sabre's assistant. He was a _good_ clown—even the other clowns said so and admired his natural gifts. He had a special gift where kids were concerned. Kids loved him immediately and sat in rapt attention broken only thrilled gasps and by uproarious bouts of laughter while they watched him perform.

Sarah had not told Chuck, but almost every time he was recruited she would tail him and watch from some hidden vantage point. Watching Chuck clown was a treat—she gasped and laughed along with the kids, and parts of her she never knew existed hummed. For some reason, Chuck's makeup never bothered her as she watched those noontime skits. Seeing him surrounded by kids made him seem utterly harmless and charming. All gooey and sweet, no trace of Stephen King.

She got a cup of coffee, picked up her loaded tray and sat down at one of the tables. Chuck joined her a minute later. "Are kids coming today?" Chuck looked up and around at the other stragglers. He noticed a couple of the other clowns dawdling over coffee at a table. "No, I guess not. Tomorrow, almost certainly. I wish they were better at scheduling these things." She ate a forkful of eggs, glancing at him out of the corner of her eye.

"So, I guess the rule that I cannot sit across from you at meals when I am in makeup is still in effect." Chuck bumped her shoulder with his.

Sarah nodded while washing down the eggs with a drink of coffee. "Yeah…uh…sorry. Indigestion."

Chuck just shook his head and carefully ate his eggs, preserving his makeup.

}o{

Circus mornings felt to Chuck like the first day, a day of creation. Each day, the little circus world came to be, it lit up and made music twice each day, matinee and evening shows, and then it ended and was gone. Chuck looked down at his feet, at his ridiculous red shoes with white spats—tuxedo shoes for a clown. He smiled. Yes, he was a spy; yes, he was on a mission. But at least he wasn't wearing spy shoes, shoes for killers. He was wearing shoes made for laughter. And he liked them more. _A lot more_.

}o{

After his pronouncement, Graham stopped brandishing the circus poster. He put it down and sat in his desk chair. Chuck and Sarah were both sitting, mouths agape, in front of him.

"The circus, Director? Really? Are there still circuses?" Chuck glanced at Sarah and shrugged. He really had no idea. He'd always like clowns but never thought much about circuses. He could dimly remember being taken to one as a small boy—but that was all.

Graham interlaced his fingers and put his joined hands on his desk. Then he unclasped his hands and leaned back. Finally, he leaned forward again. "I didn't know there were still circuses, traveling circuses, either. But there are a few. We are sending you to one."

"Why, Director?" Sarah didn't challenge Graham with the question—she just wanted information.

"We picked up chatter on the Ring. Not much. But the chatter gave us a pattern, a series of places in which Ring activity occurred—in which the few suspected Ring agents were spotted or events that bore the Ring's fingerprint took place. The pattern was spatial and temporal—now here, now there, now there," Graham was using one hand to indicate points in the air on each 'now'.

"The pattern seemed random, until some ambitious analyst noticed that the cities were all on the route of a traveling circus, and that the circus had been in those places, on those exact dates. We don't know much, but we are almost certain that there are Ring agents traveling with the circus. And given the Ring activity at the circus' stops, we think it may be someone high up in the Ring's hierarchy, maybe even an Elder.

"It also happens that the owner—not the manager, the owner—is someone we have on the books and have done…business…with before. He is not a Ring agent. He will get you in. You will be performers, not main attractions, but performers. Your contracts will be for the entire east-west run of the circus. It will be making its way across the southern US. Most stops will be in smallish cities, a few in larger ones.

"Agent Walker, given your expertise with knives and martial arts, I suggest a knife-throwing, tumbling act. And you," Graham said, turning to Chuck with a small triumphant smile, "well, Agent Carmichael, the first time I saw you I thought: _clown_. You will be Agent Walker's clown assistant, and her…target."

Graham had told them they had a week to learn enough to be passable. They could improve on the job. He had hired a clown school instructor to work with Chuck in a room in the bowels of Langley. They were to start the next day. He'd made gymnasium space available for Sarah. She would start the next day too. They would work separately part of the day, then work together later in the day trying to create an act. Graham would get mission materials ready for them in the next couple of days. He'd text them when the materials were ready.

"Tell no one about this mission. I will have only people I trust implicitly involved in it, and I will use as few of them as possible. We don't need a repeat of what happened in Romney. We will continue working here after you leave, hoping that we can get more specific information on what might be happening with the circus." With that, he dismissed them.

As they walked out, Chuck reflected that the anxiety that had been present in Graham during the Romney debrief was still there, and more pronounced than it had been. Sure, Graham had done his usual sneering at Chuck, but he hadn't tried to dissolve the partnership, and, other than his puzzling use of the phrase 'Team Carmichael', he'd done nothing that suggested he had any idea about Chuck and Sarah's personal relationship. Chuck needed to figure out what had gone on between Graham and Beridze. Maybe he should talk to his mom about it?

That thought made Chuck anxious.

}o{

After they'd eaten, Sarah picked up Chuck's tray and stacked it on hers. "Let's think about last night's show. I thought everything went well, didn't you?" She turned to face Chuck.

Chuck shook his head and she couldn't help but look at his clown face. He was frowning in the middle of his red smile. "Mostly. But that last bit, when I am trying to escape with the money, I was late getting the fake hilt onto my chest. I know that the earlier real throws have prepared the audience to believe they see you throw that last knife, but I need to be quicker. I need you to maybe shout something at me just as you are going to pretend to throw the knife."

Sarah thought about what he said. It was true. He had been late. Luckily, the audience by that point had become so enchanted with Chesko that they were all caught up in the action, and so she knew the audience was giving them a pass, forcefully suspending disbelief and ignoring the evidence of their own eyes. They talked for a little while and agreed to a change.

]o[

Sarah found it a little surprising that Chuck cared so much about the show. But he'd been trying hard to make it better since they'd started practicing it at Langley. She knew part of it was for her benefit. Chuck wanted to please her and wanted her to see that he was capable. He'd been awed by how quickly she'd been able to master the skills she needed to become Sabre. By the second night of practice at Langley, she could make the throws she needed to make for the show, and make them from all sorts of different positions. She had even come up with the basic idea for the show—her in black, Chuck in white, a criminal variation on Mad Magazine's _Spy vs. Spy_.

Chuck had told her about Chris' dark reference to that comic. Sarah had been interested enough to go to the library and check out _The Complete Casebook_. Sarah recognized the nihilism that seemed ultimately to suffuse the actions of the spies, and although she could appreciate what Chris had meant when she referred to it, she nonetheless found the comic charming, twisted, but charming. It stuck in her head. She thought of it when they brainstormed about the show. It appealed to her, and to Chuck too, as a hiding-in-plain-sight strategy and their own in-joke. So, they built the show around loosely around the comic.

Chuck wanted to pull his weight, particularly since the mission, so far at least, seemed more like one of his than one of hers. It could take a darker turn, of course, but Chuck wanted her to see his skills. So, he worked his clown school tutor remorselessly, and spent time after she had gone to sleep reading about clowning.

It had taken him time, but after two weeks, he was becoming a star. Sabre was beautiful and agile. Her bodysuit pulled the eyes of the crowd like a magnet. Chesko,though, despite his second billing (and in parentheses, as Chuck always added), and despite sharing the spotlight with Sabre, was a hit. Sarah knew that the circus manager, Antonio Cristiani, was considering adding Chesko to the center ring show that served as the warm up to the circus' grand finale. That would mean that on performance days when kids visited at lunch, Chuck would be doing four performances. She'd quickly realized that what Chuck was doing, although it was easy to overlook it, was every bit as physically demanding as what she was doing—and she only did it twice a day. Many days he performed three times (and might do it four). Yet, he found the time, the attention and the concentration to treat her the way he treated her: he was a genius at making her feel special.

Luckily, given that they spent so much time in their little trailer, their cover was that they were a newlywed couple, Charles and Sarah Charles. Their backstory was that they had met in college—at Florida State—and both briefly been part of the FSU college circus, the Flying High Circus. They dated then, but things hadn't worked out. They ran into each other in LA a few years later, Sarah working at a restaurant and trying to succeed as an actress, Chuck working at a box store and going to clown college. They'd bumped into each other, started dating, got engaged, and got married while working on their show in their spare time. The owner of the circus was a friend of a friend of theirs—the friend got them an audition, and the owner hired them.

}o{

Chuck knew there were fifty-five people who worked for the Circus Maximus. About twenty-five were performers, the rest were support personnel, ticket sellers, vendors, cooks, carpenters, and so on.

The Circus Maximus did not use animals, so there were no tigers, despite the poster Graham showed them, no elephants, no horses—and so no vets or animal trainers.

There was a minister, whose trailer, which doubled as the circus chapel, was normally parked next to Chuck and Sarah's. Chuck had stared at that trailer for a long time the first night, at the chapel sign with a cross on the door. He had shaken his head and thrown his hands up. "Spy gods. Omnipresent."

He and Sarah had by now managed to meet almost everyone working for Circus Maximus. They had dossiers on everyone before they arrived, and there were three people who were of obvious interest just on paper, but he and Sarah had been intent on face-to-face meetings with everyone, just to get a better sense of each person, and of the community. Those face-to-face meetings had added another three people to the list of people of obvious interest. They had put off beginning a serious investigation until they were comfortable with their schedule and the general schedule of the circus. They now had a sense of the rhythm of the circus days and nights, and they were planning to visit the trailer of the first of their six obvious suspects tonight, the office of manager of the circus.

Their performance was early in the evening, part of the buildup to the Cristiani Family Trapeze show that was the final act of the grand finale. Chuck and Sarah would finish their performance, go back to their trailer and change, wait until the trapeze act began, and then go to Cristiani's office—a large trailer normally parked at the far end of the line of trailers, farthest from the Big Top. Antonio went each evening to watch his family's act. He had once been the big star of the show, but age and a fall had made it impossible for him, and his wife and his grown son and two grown daughters were now the big stars of Circus Maximus. He never missed their act. Chuck and Sarah would search his trailer then.

}o{

Sarah was pleased. Their performances that day both went well. Chuck's timing on the final throw improved and the audiences both times were mesmerized and entertained. They took their bows after the final performance as Johnny Rivers' "Secret Agent Man" played. That song was the theme song of the act, and it played as the act began and ended. (In the middle of the act, they used Devo's deconstructed version of the same song. It played while Chesko tried unsuccessfully to woo Sabre. Chuck had chosen the music.) They left the Big Top and went quickly back to their trailer. Chuck went to work immediately to remove his makeup. Sarah grinned. She knew he wanted to kiss her— _and I want to kiss him_ —but he didn't want her to be squeamish about it.

She peeled off the body suit. She hated wearing it, but it worked for the act. Chuck had stalled in taking off his makeup and was watching her in the mirror.

"Not sure that's such a good idea, Chuck. None of _that_ until we finish tonight. And maybe not then. It's already been a long day."

He grinned. "You know that bodysuit makes me crazy, like you said. Although I admit, I'll be glad when we finish this mission and I am the only one who ever gets to see you in it."

"Oh, thinking ahead, are we?" Sarah smirked as she pulled on jeans. "What makes you think I won't just burn that damn thing when we finish?"

"The abject, shameless begging I am prepared to do to save it…"

Sarah pulled on a black t-shirt and walked to him, tousling his curls with her fingers. "That might work, Mr. Charles. Although I admit, if the thing continues to inspire you to the...um…heights you've reached since we've been here, I will be tempted to keep it. But just for you."

Chuck took her arm gently and kissed her fingers. "I love you, Mrs. Charles." Sarah looked down at his nearly makeup-free face and smiled, her eyes moist, her heart full to bursting. She cupped his face with her just-kissed fingers and caressed his jaw. She felt the words moving inside her, but…but she leaned down and kissed him, giving her lips to him without the words on them. He smiled at her and turned back to the mirror to finish removing his makeup. He amazed her. She stepped back from him and stretched out on the bed.

She knew he longed to hear her say that she loved him, say it to his face, but the words, despite sounding in her heart and head over and over every day, would not be spoken. She was not sure why she was finding saying them so difficult. It wasn't like she had any lingering doubt about how she felt. Frankly, she'd had no doubt about that since Chuck revealed what had been going on in Burbank. She just wasn't sure why the words wouldn't cross the border from her heart to her lips.

She sat down to put on her shoes. When they had been two days from leaving DC and starting the mission, she had felt her old mission shut-down approaching, felt herself withdrawing, battening down the hatches of her heart. Chuck had picked up on it, and it clearly bothered him. That night he had a nightmare again, woke up screaming, shivering and sweating. Sarah had held him close. As she did, she felt the shut-down just fall away, the hatches re-open. She held him close and murmured in his ear over and over that it would all be ok.

He finally told her about the dream—predictably, it was about Lawton, but it was not just a memory. In the dream, Chuck's hesitation about shooting Lawton returned once they were inside the cabin, allowing Lawton to get the gun and turn. Chuck shot him, but not before Lawton shot Sarah. Chuck was screaming over her, over her body. Lawton had killed her.

All of Chuck's fears were present in the dream, his fear of his hesitancy, his fear of his lack of hesitancy, his fear for her: the three dimensions of the spy life for Chuck. She had comforted him, made love to him slowly and deliberately. He hadn't had the dream again—at least not yet.

Sarah's mission shut-down had not returned. She was on a mission with her partner, her boyfriend, the man she loved. She loved him. She was on a mission. But she did not feel torn, as she had in Batumi and in Romney. She just felt like she felt: vulnerable, frighteningly vulnerable, yes, but also present to Chuck and present to herself. She now had so much she could _lose_ , yes, but she now had _so much_ she could lose. A person could change her life by just changing the emphasis on a set of words. _Sarah Walker, welcome to your life!_

Sarah's own bad dreams had not visited since she moved in with Chuck. He was her dreamcatcher. She felt…safe…when she was with him, settled, centered, secure. She felt herself. She continued to feel herself on the mission. Of course, her spy senses were tingling, she was vigilant, watchful, but the back-and-forth with her self-loathing that downtime and missions had consisted of before just hadn't returned after that night comforting Chuck. Somehow, sharing the burden of the man she loved had lightened her own.

Chuck had gotten dressed during Sarah's reverie, and he stretched out on the small bed beside her. It would be a half-hour or so before the trapeze act began. Chuck wove his fingers together with hers and sighed contentedly. She gave his hand a little squeeze.

"You know," Chuck said, "I've got to give Graham credit. He wasn't wrong. I sort of am a clown." Sarah joined in Chuck's soft laughter.

"I've…been told…the kids love you, Chesko," Sarah said.

"Yeah," Chuck replied in a dreamy breath, "and I sure love them too."

They both looked at the ceiling, their hands still intertwined, independently making the same wish.

}o{

They skirted along the line of trailers in the dark. For convenience, the trailers were typically parked in a certain order, almost like an address, to make it easy for the circus folk to find each other. This fact had been a source of some embarrassment for Sarah.

A couple of the women performers, acrobats, Jan and Liz, found it endlessly amusing that two such obviously…eager…newly- weds were parked beside the chapel. They had taken to singing "…We'll have a whopper/Pull out the stopper/Get me _next to the_ church on time…", and singing it deliberately off-key. It never failed to make Sarah blush, and that delighted Jan and Liz. Sarah had put up with the song good-naturedly; she liked the two women a lot. If she and Chuck had not been trying to be stealthy, she might have sung their silly version of the song to herself. _Sarah Walker, welcome to your life_!

They got to Antonio's trailer. No one was around. Sarah quickly got to work on the locked door. In a few seconds, it was open and they were inside. As they had planned, Chuck sat down at the desk immediately and began working on the computer.

Sarah picked the lock on the file cabinet and clicked on her small flashlight and started thumbing through the files. Antonio had never entirely moved into the computer age, even if he was willing to use one. As she thumbed through the files, nothing jumped out at her—at least until she got to one of the last files. It had no label on it. She pulled it out and looked inside. There were only a few sheets of paper. On each was a date, a notation that Sarah could not immediately understand, the word 'delivered' or 'accepted', and sometimes a monetary amount tacked onto the end of the line. The figures were large.

Sarah knew enough about the last trip of the circus to recognize that each of the dates was a date during a stop in a town in which there had been Ring activity. She grabbed her phone and took pictures of each of the pages. She interrupted Chuck and he studied each page carefully for several seconds. She looked at her watch. They were going to need to get out of the trailer soon.

}o{

Chuck had quickly gotten past Antonio's simplistic security measures on the computer. After a bit of tinkering, he got to Antonio's email. Scrolling through, everything looked normal. Business emails to employees or clients, a few personal ones to family members. Chuck continued scrolling and then he stopped.

There was an email exchange between Antonio and Luka Beridze. Chuck quickly read through each of the emails. Superficially, they seemed to be about Antonio arranging for a visit to a well-known gambling spot in Batumi. The phrasing was stilted—but then again, Antonio's English was far from perfect. But Chuck did not think the email could possibly be a coincidence—no way. It had to mean something that the two men had been in contact, even if there was nothing of significance in the emails themselves.

Sarah put her hand on Chuck's shoulder. They needed to go.

He clicked out of everything on the computer, leaving it as he found it. Sarah had shut and relocked the file cabinet. They'd just gotten out of the trailer and slipped around behind it when they heard Antonio's voice in the distance. He was arguing with his wife—Maria—about something in the performance. As Antonio and Maria got to the door, Chuck and Sarah snuck away on the other side of the trailer.

}o{

Chuck met with his mom the day before he and Sarah were to leave for the circus. They met outside, in a park, despite the cold. Frost chose a bench with a commanding view of the area. Spy mom, always.

His mom's eyes had danced when he told her about the mission. Evidently, although Chuck had no memory of it, he had threatened to run away to the circus once when he had been angry with his mom. He'd gone so far as to pack his suitcase.

Frost rolled her eyes, smiling. "So, you're going to do it, at last, Chuck?"

"I guess so." He rolled his eyes at her in turn. "Look, Mom, seriously, I need your help. Do you trust Graham?" He looked at her squarely.

"Do you have some reason not to trust him, Chuck?"

Chuck jerked and stood up, glaring down at his mom. "Can you please just answer a question for me, Mom, please?"

Frost looked at her shoes and then around the park for a minute. "I'm sorry. I have lived my life in secrets for so long that hardly know what it is to answer a question directly. Even with my kids. I am always worried…about giving something away, giving myself away. Please sit back down. I will answer you." Chuck sat.

"Do I trust Langston Graham. Absolutely not. Never. Not since I have known him—and that has been a long time, Chuck. He hasn't really been my boss for a while—and that is partly because I don't trust him." She looked away from Chuck for a moment.

"Graham's not your boss? I guess I knew that, guessed it. So, tell me, Mom, how are you a CIA agent?" Chuck had wanted to ask this for a while.

"Because it makes the most sense to go on treating me as one. I am going to tell you something now, Chuck. I am not going to explain it. But I promise that I will as soon as I…am able…to do so. You know, I assume, of the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence?"

"Yeah, sure."

"Well, you could say I am their…liaison to the CIA, sort of a…non-voting 'member' of that committee stationed at Langley. I report to the Chair of the Committee, not to Graham, although the CIA does pay me." Her gaze was open, her tone unguarded. He was sure she was telling him the truth—as bizarre as it sounded.

Chuck shook his head, hard. "Graham tolerates that?"

"He's got no choice, Chuck." Frost's voice was flat.

"So, are you _his_ boss?"

"No, but I am more like a…consultant. Although I do have a…ah…veto power, at least in certain cases." She pursed her lips, clearly considering those cases.

Chuck sat in silence, trying to understand. "How is it that you have that power, Mom?"

"That's something I will explain…when I am able. For now, please just accept what I have told you." She made waved her hand, motioning Chuck away from the topic.

"Back to Graham. I don't trust him—not because I think he is an enemy of the state, or anything quite like that. I don't trust him because his ultimate loyalty is to power. He's willing to cut corners to get his way, even if that means…bending the rules…bending the law. I don't know of anything he has done that is worth the upheaval of trying to replace him, so I have left him alone, let him run the spook show—for the most part. I've only used my veto power a few times since I've had it."

"Can I ask how long that is?"

"I'm not sure exactly, several years now. You know, Graham and I had our first showdown over your girlfriend, although that was before I had the power to do anything about anything."

"Huh?"

"I was at the Farm at the beginning of training for a class of new recruits. Graham was there too. I had been assigned to do some work with a couple of the instructors. Officially, I wasn't there." Frost didn't seem to want to dwell on that and she added quickly: "I got curious about why Graham was there, why he seemed so interested in these particular recruits. But then I realized it wasn't the recruits, plural, it was a recruit, singular, her. _Sarah_. I didn't meet her. I don't think she ever even saw me. But I saw her.

"I watched her whenever I could in those first few days. It was obvious she was terrified. But it was impressive how well she hid it. It was also obvious that she was profoundly unhappy. She hid that well too. I didn't realize immediately how young she was. But when I did, I saw red. I cornered Graham in an empty office and I asked the bastard about how she had been recruited. He was cagey, never really answered, but it was clearly a…non-standard…recruitment.

"I tried to get him to see that she was…just a girl. She should not be at the Farm. He said she would prove that she should be. I told him that was not what I meant. We went around and around. I swear to God, I almost strangled him then and there. I couldn't move him, couldn't get him to change his mind.

"I had to leave a day or two after that. Sarah had already shown how remarkably skilled she would be. I had no way to change it. I did keep tabs on her during her time at the Farm and in the early days as an agent. But she seemed so much under Graham's influence, and so far gone, so fast, I…well, I gave up on her. I hated it, but I figured she'd be dead or be a burnout within a year, two at the most. The pace Graham worked her at was…well, I should have done more. Talked to someone. I became an agent young too, Chuck. Not as young as Sarah, but young.

"This is a bad business even if you come into it with some sense of who you are and what your values are—the way you did—but it is especially bad if you don't. It owns you before you realize your soul was at auction…Most spies, Chuck, despite being intelligent and skillful, are moral bottom feeders. And if we are not," she snuck a glance at him, "we usually become such. How can we not?"

Chuck put his arm around his mom. She scooted a little closer to him. "You know, Chuck, it is shocking to me that Sarah is not only not dead, I don't think she is a burnout. I think she has somehow held onto something through all these years, through the hellish life she's lived. I don't know how she did it, but it seems she has…I hope she has."

His mom's voice broke, then dead silence. Chuck did not know what to say.

"But, I'm not sure I did," she finally added, and turned a remarkably open gaze on Chuck.

He pulled her to him in a hug. "I love you, Mom." He felt her stiffen and then felt her force herself to relax. "I love you too, Chuck."

When the hug ended, Frost asked him again if he had reason to mistrust Graham. He told her about Beridze, about what he found out about Graham's dealings with him.

Frost frowned. "Well, you're right. Graham could explain those away, presumably, unless there is other evidence available about what precisely was going on. But I also think you are right to be worried about this. Graham must rate you as not much of a threat. He's still willing to antagonize you personally, although it is also clear that he's not willing to push too hard on you or on Sarah. He'll create trouble if he can, but he isn't planning to break the two of you apart himself, directly.

"Perhaps if he knew what your partnership has become, perhaps then he'd try directly to end the partnership. But I suspect he believes you'll cave in and do things he knows you don't want to do, and that as a result you will either become tractable, or Sarah will lose interest when you are no longer…shiny. Or maybe he thinks Sarah will just eventually see you as a liability. However he sees it, he's still betting against you two, but he's willing to play the long game…"

"Well, his constant assumption in all of that is that Sarah will never truly change, never decide to quit." Chuck pressed his lips together in frustration.

"True, Chuck, Graham is banking on that. He believes in her training, he believes in the decade of wet work. He believes she has nowhere to go, really, and no way to get there if she did."

Chuck had nothing to say to that and Frost did not go on.

They sat silently and watched a young couple and their two small children on the opposite bench. What they saw made them both a little melancholy.

Frost finally got up. "Thanks for coming to me with this, Chuck. I'll do some quiet digging on Beridze and let you know if I find anything."

"Thanks, Mom. See you when the mission's done."

Frost frowned at that, but waved goodbye and turned and left.

}o{

Back in their trailer, Chuck and Sarah compared notes. Chuck sat down and reproduced the gist of the emails he had read. He could fill in the rest later. It was all there in his memory. Mainly, he wanted Sarah to be able to get a better sense of what they had said. He gave them to her. While she read them and pondered, he produced an exact copy of the sheets she had found in the file cabinet. She had photos on the phone, but these would be working copies.

Chuck studied them for a while. The crux was the column of notations. What did they mean? It was obvious enough that this was not circus business. Chuck noticed that many, but not all, the notations ended with an 'M'. _Maria_? Was his wife the one who was making the deliveries and pickups? She had not seemed suspicious, in and of herself, not on paper, not in person. Chuck shared the thought with Sarah. She pointed out that it would be hard for Antonio himself to be doing these things. Most days he was swamped, with people in and out of his trailer from early in the day until late. Maria was a decent guess. They'd keep working on the notations, and in the meantime, Sarah would see if she could catch Maria leaving the circus and tail her, if she did.

They took all the papers, the emails and the records, and hid them. Chuck poured them both a glass of wine and they sat down on the small couch and let the mission go until tomorrow. It felt strange to Sarah, but she was able to do it, to let it go.

They had put their glasses down and were kissing heatedly when they heard Jan and Liz outside, giggling, sounding like they'd had something to drink too: they weren't off-key. They were singing "Ding-dong the bells are gonna chiiiimmmmeee…" Their giggles faded as they passed. Although she did not break the kiss, Chuck felt Sarah's lips stretch into a smile and felt her laugh.

Chuck leaned back onto the couch as far as he could—given his height, not far—and Sarah leaned into him, her head resting on his chest, her eyes closed. After a moment, he picked up the tune, but with the original words: "I'm getting married in the morning/Ding-dong the bells are gonna chime…"

Sarah smiled, hearing his voice with one ear fill the air and with the other fill his chest. She felt suddenly sleepy and safe, and snuggled tighter against Chuck's chest.

She felt him relax further, then she heard him speak. "You know…it's not such a bad idea…getting married…"

Sarah's eyes snapped open as Chuck nodded off.

* * *

 **A/N2** Those of you who read _Cables to Aces_ know that the story was built around Thomas Merton's _Cables to the Ace_ poem. This mission, while not as closely related to a poem, takes its title and some of its "feel" (and a few other things I will mention as we go along) from Robert Lax's _Circus Days and Nights_. It is a stunningly beautiful book, containing what I think may be the most beautiful poem in English, "The Sunset City". Lax was, by the way, a good friend of Merton's.

Tune in next time for more of the circus! "We'll have a whopper/Pull out the stopper..."


	15. Chapter 15: Pratfall

**A/N1** More of the circus. Yay! The show goes on.

Keep in mind that I am still assembling necessaries for this mission. Because it is a more complicated mission, and because it presents more of the overarching plot, it will take me a while to develop my pieces. I aim to do that entertainingly, but I want to warn you that it will take time to get to the middle game and especially to the end game.

This chapter _really is_ a chapter, but, well, you'll see…and it's a little shorter than chapters have lately been.

Thanks so much for the reviews and PMs. Lots of good stories now on the site. I appreciate you spending time with mine.

Don't own Chuck.

* * *

 **Turned Tables**

 _The Circus Days and Nights Mission_

* * *

Tuesday, February 12, 2008  
Outside Charleston, South Carolina  
Circus Maximus Camp  
7:15 am

* * *

CHAPTER 15 Pratfall

* * *

Sarah hadn't slept. Not well, anyway. She knew Chuck hadn't _proposed_. She knew he was almost asleep and that Jan and Liz had been singing that song…

She knew all that, and yet she had panicked.

Why?

She had been wrestling that question since she slipped out Chuck's arms on the small couch and left the trailer. She walked to the cookhouse, shocked to see it so busy. Of course, she was rarely up this early, so she routinely missed breakfast during its busiest time.

She saw a hand in the air. Jan was waving her to a table. Liz was seated there too. Neither was eating. Each gripped a coffee mug like a life buoy. Sarah waved back, indicating that she would join them. She got herself some toast, juice and a coffee and went back to their table.

They both looked at her through dull eyes. Jan finally spoke, noticing Sarah's slightly raised brow. "A fan gave us a couple of bottles of good wine and we…finished them. And maybe another one we already had. Neither of us is sure, and I sure as hell wasn't going to dig in our trash can to count bottles."

Liz wrinkled her freckled nose, her strawberry blond head concurring. "Me, neither."

They inspected Sarah for a second. Liz offered: "And you, Sabre, I take it hubby kept you humping until the wee small…hours?"

"Liz!" Jan hissed. "Do you have any idea how many ways that question was wrong?"

Liz just grinned. "I'm a wordsmith—not just an acrobat. It's not my fault that Sabre can't stop rodeoing her clown."

Sarah felt her blush make the tips of her ears burn. She swallowed before she spoke, trying to smile. "Um, yes, something like that." Sarah knew her smile faltered.

Jan leaned over and put her hand on Sarah's. "Ignore her. Looks like a cherub, talks like a punny _976_ number." Jan leveled a look at Liz, who shrugged unapologetically. Jan's wide-set green eyes had life in them now, sympathy. "Are you ok, Sarah? Is something…off…between you and…" Jan nodded in the direction of Sarah's trailer.

Sarah gently took her hand from Jan's. She put her elbows on the table and rested her chin on her doubled fists. "No, not really. I mean maybe. I'm just…uncertain…about our future. I'm with Chuck, I'm certain of that. But I don't know where we are heading, exactly. It's not clear we can do…what we are doing…for much longer." Jan started to protest, but Sarah softly went on. "I've been a…carny…in a way…all my life. My dad…was one. He raised me, if you can call it that. But my life, our current life…I don't think it is the right one for Chuck…us…" She paused and took a deep breath.

"Have you seen Chesko—Chuck—with the kids?" Each of the women nodded, and grinned. Sarah grinned back as best she could. "Yeah, me too. I am pretty sure he wants kids, and in the last…little while…I've become sure I do. It has been on my mind, really, since before Chuck and I got…back together. I want kids. I want his kids."

Liz snickered. "Well, you two sow like Johnny Appleseed. Eventually, you'll reap. Right?"

"But…reaping…will mean giving up the life I have known, the only life I've known, and that terrifies me. And I have no reason to think I am…mother material."

Jan narrowed her eyes. "Don't talk nonsense, Sabre. You can be a mom if you want to be a mom—I mean as long a Mother Nature allows it."

Liz chortled. "See, I'm rubbing off on Jan."

Sarah laughed. After a minute, though, she became pensive. Jan and Liz waited until she went on. "But, you see, in my past, I've done things that…were wrong. Things my... dad…told me to do. Things I was…required to do. Some bad things."

Jan looked puzzled but then chided Sarah. "And you think that disqualifies you to be a mother? There'd be no mothers, Sabre, if that were true." Liz muttered her agreement. Jan went on. "Well, maybe the Virgin Mary," both Jan and Liz crossed themselves, "but not anyone else."

"I take it Chuck not only wants kids, he wants your kids," Jan asked. Sarah looked at the tabletop for a minute, then nodded slowly, a little put off by the question.

"So, you two disagree? You think Chuck is not… _what?_...good enough, smart enough, to choose the mother of his children? He chose you as his bride—was he not good enough, not smart enough, to do that?"

"Yeah," Liz added, "and as often as that man fertilizes your garden, I have to think he'd be happy eventually to collect some…fruit."

Jan slapped her own forehead with her open hand, and then glared incredulously at Liz. "Jesus, Liz! Can you _please_ stop it?"

Liz looked down, feigning embarrassment, but grinning to herself.

Sarah knew she was misleading them. While Jan and Liz were thinking about Sarah as a mother, Sarah was primarily thinking about herself as a wife. But the issues were bound up with each other.

Why was she so panicked about what Chuck said?

Because, for her, marrying Chuck would mean leaving the spy life. Not because _he_ would make it a condition of their marrying, but because _she_ would, she had. She would not bind him to the spy life, would not allow him to vow himself to it. That was not going to be the _worse_ in _For Better or Worse_ —if she got to say those words to Chuck and have him say them to her.

If she were going to marry Chuck, it would be as a free agent, not as a Special Agent. She knew Chuck wanted out of the spy life; she knew he could get out. He could have another life. He ought to have another life.

She wasn't going to make him marry into the spy life.

But could she leave it? Why was she hesitating?

Why couldn't she tell the man she loved so desperately that she loved him—to his face, in so many words, without hedging or indirection? Were the two problems connected, were they really one problem? How could she have wished for children with Chuck last night and then spent a sleepless night because of his edge-of-dreams mention of marriage?

Before Sarah navigated the maze of these questions, Chuck joined them at the table. She hadn't seen him arrive—too lost in her own thoughts. He sat down beside her. He had no makeup on, since they were up so early. She could tell he was puzzled about waking up and finding her gone. She should have left a note. She'd just been so restless.

"Hey, all!" Chuck chirped as he sat down. Jan and Liz both smiled at him. Sarah noticed their smiles were awkward—perhaps they were worried that Chuck had heard some of what they were saying. Sarah looked at him. No, he was puzzled about her being gone, but he showed no signs of having heard anything they'd been saying.

Liz looked at Chuck's tray. "Hey, Chesko, fresh fruit this morning. An apple, even. Garden delights, eh, Johnny?"

Sarah had sipped her coffee and nearly spit it out when Liz finished. Jan dropped her head onto the table with an audible clunk. Liz got up, curtsied, and left trailing a giggle.

Chuck blinked blankly. "Um, what just happened? Johnny? Did she mean Johnny Appleseed? The guy who traveled around, throwing seed?"

Sarah was now shaking with silent laughter. Jan banged her head a couple of more times on the table and then stood up. "On that note, I am going to go. Bye, guys."

Sarah said goodbye and Chuck waved as Jan left. Chuck turned to Sarah, his face serious, worried. "Hey, are you ok? You were gone."

"I'm fine, Chuck, just couldn't sleep. I gave up and decided to eat. Jan and Liz were…entertaining me."

Chuck seemed dissatisfied. "Are you sure? No bad dreams, or…something?"

"No," she smiled, "just a head full of thoughts"

He put his hand on her knee. "Ok, but you know I'm here if you need me, if you…um…want to talk?"

She nodded. She knew she should talk to him, tell him what was on her mind.

Her phone rang. She looked at it, then at him. "Graham."

Chuck gestured for her to answer.

"Walker. Yes, Director. Really? Yes. Yes. When? That's disturbing all around," Sarah winced. "Ok, let us know."

"What did he say?"

"Lawton's corpse was found a little while ago. He'd been buried deep in the woods. Evidently, coyotes dug him up and, well…ate a lot of him. His left arm was gone, missing. Not gnawed off. Sawed off—with a surgical saw, they're guessing. A hunter found him."

Chuck's appetite was immediately gone. He pushed his tray away. "Ok. Huh. Well, there had to be some reason to take his body…Someone wanted his…arm?"

"Someone wanted us not to have it, I guess…" Sarah replied. She glanced at Chuck, checking on him. She could tell that the news had unsettled him, but he so far seemed to be handling it. She hoped his dreams wouldn't return.

"Graham will let us know if the autopsy reveals anything."

Chuck was chewing on his bottom lip, thinking, but he nodded. Sarah reached out and rubbed the back of his neck softly. He closed his eyes. Then he smiled at her. "Let's take a walk."

]o[

After attending to their trays, they joined hands and walked. Even once the Big Top was up, mornings remained busy at Circus Maximus. The tent had to be checked each day for safety, repaired if there were any damage or problems, and it had to be cleaned. Folks were moving about purposefully.

Sarah turned for a moment into the tent. She was struck by the expanse of it, by the waving walls and the tiers of seats. It seemed both so permanent and so temporary—a place of wonder and wonders, of fantasy and escape. If it weren't for the preponderance of clowns, Sarah thought she would grow to like the place, that she already did like the place anyway.

Of course, much of that was because of the man holding her hand, looking around, as she had been, but marveling at the tent in his childlike way. Chuck was not a child, but unlike most adults she knew, he'd never let the child he had been wither and die. That child was still present in Chuck. That thought made her warm all over, happy. She could see he was no longer thinking of Lawton. Good.

They left the Big Top and walked on, past the main sideshow tent and the dotting of individual sideshow tents. _Griselda, Reader of Palms, Seer of the Future._ _Ian the Illusionist._ They passed Chuck's favorite sign, a picture of an attractive brunette holding a ventriloquist's dummy that looked just like her: _Sal and Sam—Can You Tell Who's the Dummy?_ Chuck stopped to look back at the sign. Sarah felt a flash of annoyance. He always did a double take on that sign.

Looking thoughtful, he turned to her. "A dummy named Sam…Do you think that's short for 'Samantha'?" Sarah's annoyance fled, replaced by mild panic. She tried to control her features, but she knew she was a moment late; she hadn't expected that. But if Chuck noticed, he didn't react. He just looked at her.

"I don't know," she answered. "Do you really think the dummy has both a name and a nickname?"

Chuck widened his eyes, and lifted and dropped his shoulders. "I don't know. Maybe?"

They walked on. Sarah was no longer paying much attention to the sights, she was thinking about her secrets.

Yes, Chuck knew her file. He knew a lot about her. He knew a little about her father. But she kept so much—practically everything—from him. The details of her childhood. How she felt during and after her recruitment, during and after those missions. Maybe the cost of keeping all those secrets was that she could not say the words to him she most wanted to say. She could not share what she most wanted to share because she refused to share so much.

They reached the edge of the circus camp. The field the circus was in stretched on. They stopped when they heard a voice behind them. It was Reggie, one of the clowns. He caught up with them.

"Hey, Chuck. I just wanted to tell you there will be kids here for lunch, and Antonio wants you there."

"Sure, Reggie. I figured. See you there?"

"Yeah. See you there." Reggie turned and headed back toward the Big Top. He had close-cropped blond hair, and was short and stout. He had a walk that amused Sarah. With each step, he went well up onto his toes of his foot before he rolled forward onto his other foot, so that he bounced up and down as he stepped. She turned to Chuck.

"So, his clown name is 'Juvi'? Really?"

Chuck grinned, concessively. "Ummm….yeah, really. And I grant you. That _is_ creepy. I've been afraid even to ask…" He gave her hand a squeeze. "But he seems a good guy, apart from the hippity-hoppity."

"Oh, you noticed too?"

Chuck just gave her a flat look in response.

They turned and walked together back to their trailer.

}o{

Sarah was crouching in the dark, waiting. The signal would come soon.

As she waited, she thought about Chuck's conversation with Frost. He had told her about it after it happened, and it had been on and off her mind since then. Frost had known Sarah—or known of her—since her recruitment. When Frost first visited Sarah, at Sarah's DC apartment, she made it seem like all she knew was what was in a redacted version of Sarah's file. Perhaps that was true enough. Given what Chuck told her, Frost had evidently not kept track of Sarah for too long after the Farm, so maybe she had gotten most of what she knew from Sarah's file. But she had known more than the redacted file told her. She had been there at the start, tried to get Graham to reverse course.

Frost had to know Chuck would tell Sarah about it. So, Frost had not just been telling that story to Chuck; she had also been telling it to Sarah. Frost was right about her. Those first days at the Farm, she had been terrified. She had been so profoundly unhappy that she had to remind herself to breathe.

Strange though it was, her terror and unhappiness had ended up helping her. She was very smart. She had always been athletic, even if she hadn't been an athlete. She turned out to be beautiful, once the CIA folks got a chance to give her a Farm makeover. She channeled her terror and unhappiness into her assignments, into the work. While it did not make the terror or unhappiness go away, it turned them into sources of energy. She had no one. She had nothing. All she had was the Farm, the classes, the next assignment. She turned that into her world. She taught herself how to survive and then how to excel.

Most of the time at the Farm was, frankly, boring and isolating. She was a girl stuck in a swampy section of Virginia with nothing to do. But Sarah was not interested in downtime activities of the other recruits—not in TV or playing games, but mostly not in the petty, rancorous gossiping, and the extravagant sleeping-around that preoccupied many of the other recruits and some of the instructors. (She was a girl in a very _adult_ environment.) So, she threw herself as deeply as she could into the work. She not only learned to do what she was required to do, she mastered it. She asked for extra work. She spent hour after hour after hour in the gym, and on the range.

Her increasing excellence allowed her to distract herself almost entirely from her feelings about what was happening to her and around her. She began to see that she could not only do the job Graham recruited her for, she began to see that she could be the best at it. The attention, the accolades—especially the personal emails from Graham, congratulating her when she did well, encouraging her—those were magic for a girl who had known so little love, or kindness, or even attention, for most of her life. She gulped down her terror and unhappiness each time they rose, and grabbed hold of her increasing skills. She set a course for the next decade of her life: high professional achievement fueled by deep personal unhappiness…

Sarah heard the tell-tale sounds. The signal was imminent.

Mary had said that Graham trusted Sarah's training, trusted her decade of wet work, trusted that all of it would conspire to make her never want to leave the spy life, or never be able to leave if she wanted. Graham really was a son of a bitch. He had _built_ her, Director Frankenstein had, out of terror and unhappiness and kind-seeming emails, and he would work his monster until it was dead.

Dead.

Dead.

That word hung from Sarah's mind, dangling, swinging.

Dead.

That had always been Graham's endgame for her. He hadn't wanted it soon, of course. He hadn't wanted it as the end of any particular mission. But the expectation, if not the plan, at least not yet, had always been for her to be killed on some mission. Graham would then burn her file and move on, reaping his rewards from her miserable life as she rotted somewhere, unknown, unmissed, unloved.

But she was no longer unloved. Graham not only underestimated her, he underestimated Chuck, particularly underestimated what being loved by Chuck could do to her. How much change that love could spur. Graham's cynicism blinded him to possibilities. Or so Sarah hoped.

But so far, hadn't Graham seen all-too-clearly, been right? Had she quit? Could she?

Yes, she could. It wasn't proving easy, but that didn't make it impossible. She _was_ changing. It wasn't always clear to her internally, but when she thought about what she did and didn't do, she could see that her patterns of behavior were...different. Some of it was also becoming clear internally, like that hum when she watched Chuck clowning for the kids.

She needed to talk to Chuck. She needed to tell him about the Farm. He'd been there too. She needed to talk about her dad and her mom. She needed to talk about missions. He already knew some of the gruesome details. She needed to talk to him about Budapest.

She was sure now that Graham's suspicions of her, his real reason for using Chuck to test her loyalty in Burbank, was because of Budapest. Because of what Graham knew happened there, and because he knew that he didn't know all that had happened there.

She could trust Chuck with Budapest. She could trust Chuck. She did trust him.

 _The signal_!

She heard the familiar opening guitar riff of "Secret Agent Man". The lights came up a little. She saw Chesko emerge. He had been hiding behind a box painted to look like a business building. He walked with funny, exaggerated steps around it, sticking a big red shoe out into the air then reaching it forward to touch the ground before pushing his weight onto it and picking up his other red shoe to reach it forward. It was a sneaky walk, a funny variation of Reggie's walk, made huge and hugely amusing, especially with the baggy white tux and white top hat. Chesko was already tall, but with that hat, he seemed to go on…forever. She heard snickers ripple through the audience. As she glanced up and down the length of Chuck, even the clown makeup did not prevent desire rippling through her.

Chesko stopped a couple of times, freezing his pose. Each time he managed to hold the pose long enough to unsettle the audience. Nervous laughs dotted the crowd. Finally, he stopped in front of another box, painted like a safe. He reached into his tuxedo jacket and fished around. Out came a Dixie cup connected by a string to another Dixie cup. Chesko did an eyebrow dance—made more noticeable because of the heavy black eyebrows drawn in makeup, and then he put one Dixie cup to the front of the safe. He put the other to his ear, then tried to back away from the Dixie cup far enough to pull the string taut. But of course he had to let go of the cup to do it, and it fell to the floor, leaving him with the one cup pressed to his ear and the other no longer against the door of the safe, but on the floor. He went back to his original position and pulled out a roll of tape from his jacket. With studied care, he taped the one cup to the front of the safe, then crouching down, he duckwalked away from the safe until the string was taut. He put the cup to his ear and gave the audience a big thumbs up. Then he reached out to turn the knob of the safe, but he was too far away to touch it.

While this was going on, Sabre entered the scene. She skulked behind other boxes painted like buildings, and watched Chesko. Sabre laughed into her hand at Chesko's antics, making sure the audience could see it. Chesko paused, like he heard something, but then went on. Eventually, Chesko gave up on the Dixie cups and put his ear to the safe. He opened it, to his surprise, and reached in and retrieved a big bag marked _Top Secret._ He held the bag out from his body, and Sabre leaped over the safe, rolling through her landing, and then she threw a knife, pinning the bag to the low wooden wall behind the bag. Chesko abandoned the bag, and escaped through a standing door (a prop frame around a working door) and another knife embedded in the door as it closed behind him. Sabre retrieved the knife in the door and then the one in the bag, and she took the bag, but not before shooting a longing glance at the closed door. A small LED heart that Sarah had pinned to her bodysuit started to glow as the lights went down.

When the lights came back up, Chesko was standing behind a counter, his tuxedo marred by a giant pocket protector and a 'Chesko' name tag. Sabre walked toward the counter carrying a purse. She reached into it, feeling the audience tense up, but she pulls out a cell phone. She mimed that it wouldn't work. Chesko took it and began to work on it, but with a giant red screwdriver many times larger than the phone itself. He returned the phone to her and she put it to her ear. She gave him a thumbs-up, and then gestured from him to the phone a couple of times: "Call me". Chesko nodded. She walked away from the desk.

After a moment of indecision, Chesko took a cell phone out of his pocket. He put it on the counter, and punched in a number. The sound of dialing played in the tent and then the only word of the show was spoken: Sabre answered the phone with an excited, "Hello?" Chesko heard her answer. He pulled his Dixie cups out of his jacket, put one to the phone and the other to his ear, and began to mime a conversation. He smiled. As the lights went down, an LED heart embedded in his pocket protector started to glow.

The lights came back up. Sabre was seated at the counter, miming talking on the phone. Above her hangs a sign. _Talking to the Big Boss_. She was quarreling with the Big Boss, shaking her head no. Eventually, she sadly nodded yes. She picked up a picture of Chesko, and hugged it to her chest. Then she taped it to the standing door, walked away, and then whirled and hurled a knife into the picture. The audience gasped. Her LED heart started to blink. The lights went down.

The lights came up. Chesko was doing his sneaky walk. Sabre was moving behind him, hidden from him. Devo's "Secret Agent Man" begins to play in the background. Chesko alerted the audience that he knew Sabre was there. She stood, her knife poised to throw. But Chesko has already turned to her, and he is holding his tuxedo jacket open toward her, pulled back from his chest. His heart light was glowing. He had his back to the door. Sabre looked lost, stricken. She threw the knife but missed Chesko. Chesko walked toward her. She was weeping. He tried to comfort her, hold her. She pushed him away. He pulled his now-battered Dixie cups from his pocket, and extended one to her, while he held the other to his ear. She shook her head no. She left as the lights went down.

Through all the scenes, Chesko was hilarious and tragic all at once; Sabre was scary and confused and torn. The audience was enthralled.

The lights came up for a final time. Chesko had a bag in each hand, the bag that said _Top Secret_ and another with a dollar sign on it. He was sneaking away with them, but looked heartbroken. Sabre tumbled onto the stage and threw a knife. It embedded hilt-deep in Chesko chest, his hand around it, disbelief on his face. One of the prop guys crawled out behind a large painting of a police car. Sabre stepped between it and Chesko. She reached into the pocket of her suit and produced a badge. She gestured at Chesko, then at herself. "He's mine." The police car backed away. When it was gone, Sabre bent over Chesko and kissed him, her eyes shut. He stirred. He handed her the hilt—there was no blade. A fake. He took a piece of paper from his jacket and held it up. It read: "Our plan", and under a line of x's and o's, it was signed, _Sabre_. She picked up the _Top Secret_ bag. Chesko picked up the dollar sign bag. He pulled out his Dixie cups, and extended one to Sabre. She held it to her chest, to the heart LED that started to glow there. Chesko pulled the string taut and held the other cup to his glowing heart. The lights went down. Johnny Rivers played.

}o{

After the grand finale, Chuck sat with Sarah outside of Jan and Liz's trailer. Reggie was there too. Everyone was in good spirits. It was the final night in South Carolina. Tomorrow they'd be on the road to their next stop at a small town in Georgia. Chuck and Sarah couldn't stay long. They'd planned to spend time working on the documents from Antonio's office and considering their next move. Maria had not left the circus that day, and so there had been no chance to follow her.

Chuck felt tired, good tired, and happy. He was enjoying being in the circus.

Sarah's phone rang. She picked it up, looked at it, looked to Chuck. "I need to take this." She stepped away for a few minutes. She came back to the table after ending the call. "Chuck, we need to talk."

Chuck got up. "See you, everybody." They all said goodnight.

As they walked to the trailer, Chuck could tell something was going on. But Sarah said nothing until they got in the trailer. She motioned for Chuck to sit down but she seemed coiled and anxious. He couldn't sit with her like that, so he remained standing and motioned for her to tell him.

"Chuck, that was Graham. A guard in the supermax prison holding Bryce tried to kill him today. This morning, I guess. He survived. He had to have surgery, and his condition is dicey. But he is conscious and he keeps claiming he has important information. But he says he will only share it with me. I am the only person he will talk to."

Chuck tried to choke down the jealous panic that thickened his voice, but did not entirely succeed. "Bryce wants you?"

"He wants to talk to me, Chuck. I have no interest in talking to him, but Graham gave me no choice. A car will be here in a moment to take me to the airfield. A chopper will get me to the prison. It's not that far from here. I will catch up with you tomorrow. Tomorrow is a travel day, so it's not complicated." Her tone had gotten gray, neutral, her face hard to read.

Chuck breathed out heavily, resigned. Suddenly he was no longer good tired, just plain tired. "Other than the mission stuff, I hoped we could talk about this morning, Sarah. Something was on your mind."

She grabbed her gun and her jacket and turned to him. She had put her purse on the bed. "Yes, Chuck, something was on my mind. I have things I want to try to tell you. And things I need to explain. But it will all keep until tomorrow." She gave him a small smile as she put on her jacket and put her gun in her purse. "Work on those documents we got from Antonio. I will be back to you soon." She kissed him. He caught her hand as she turned, and pulled her back to him. "I love you, Sarah Walker."

She gave him the small smile a second time. "I know." She stared damply at him for a second, but said nothing more. Then she was gone.

Chuck finally sat down. Actually, he fell on his own ass. A literal _pratfall_. But his pratfall ended with his end in a chair, and not on the floor.

* * *

 **A/N2** I know, a _differentish_ sort of chapter, complete with a sub-Shakespearean play-within-the-play. Our next (standard) chapter is "Sideshow". Tune in to accompany Sarah on her visit to Bryce. Chuck thinks seriously about clowning. Fun, fun!


	16. Chapter 16: Sideshow

**A/N1** From the Big Top to the Big House. Sigh.

I'm pleased so many enjoyed the last chapter. Thank you for all the reviews and PMs about it, and about the story.

Being Ringmaster Zettel is hella fun.

Well, except for this chapter. This chapter was hella un-fun. Always one of those chapters, at least, in every story, a chapter that fights back.

This chapter could perhaps have been entitled, "Oh, so that's the predicament we're in!" But that's rather a mouthful. (Also, I don't think the site will allow a title that long. Shrug.)

Anyhoo, without further ado, welcome to Chapter 16, "Sideshow".

Don't own Chuck. Don't own the dawn, although someone did once tell me it is always darkest before dawn.

* * *

 **Turned Tables**

 _The Circus Days and Nights Mission_

* * *

Wednesday, February 13, 2008  
Dedicated CIA Supermax Prison  
Location: Classified  
4:40 am

* * *

CHAPTER 16 Sideshow

* * *

Sarah marched along the long concrete hallway leading to the hospital wing of the prison. She thought of comparing herself to Eurydice: well, now she was back in Hades, back in Hell.

The supermax facility was small, basically off-the-grid. It was housed almost entirely underground and run by the CIA. It was their dedicated prison for their most important or dangerous prisoners. Sarah had visited here only once before, on a mission she didn't want to recall, desperate to get information from a prisoner that would allow her to save twelve hostages. The prisoner had not cooperated—even after Sarah sent the guards away and became 'persuasive'—and she later learned that the hostages had been killed before she had entered the prison, and the damage left behind by her 'persuasion' would have accomplished nothing, even if the man had talked. He hadn't. She had never done anything like that before and certainly not since.

She supposed that man was still down here somewhere, along some other long hallway. Her skin crawled. He was an evil man, but what she had done to him had for a long time had been the grotesque featured attraction in many nightmares. The CIA shrink Graham sent her to had been no help. Sarah felt like she wanted to die, and he only made it worse. She later was told by Graham that the shrink rated her a suicide risk. Sarah had told the man that she wanted to die, but the shrink had never seemed to understand that, for her, suicide would not have helped anything. She had taken lives—balance required that hers be taken from her, not that she take it. If she killed herself, she would be terminating another target, adding another victim, compounding the problem, not contributing to its solution. She had eventually gotten past all that, past those nightmares.

The guard accompanying her stopped in front of a windowless heavy steel door. It was marked only with a number, nothing more. He put his hand on a scanner by the door and, after a second, the door unlocked noisily. He pushed it open and stepped aside so she could enter. As she did, the tell-tale odor of a hospital wafted around her (artificial strawberry-scented cleaner plus urine plus latex), although the area she entered was still mostly gray concrete and gray steel.

After the open air and the bright, saturated color of the circus, Sarah felt buried alive—trapped in the cold obstruction of this horrible place.

She tried to shake the feeling. It had been true before she entered that she did not want to be here—she'd have been happy never to have been back here; no, more, she'd have been happy never knowing this place existed. And now she was here again, under orders, to talk to Bryce Larkin, former partner, traitor, prisoner.

Chuck had not hidden his anxiety well. She knew that his history with Larkin made Chuck peculiarly vulnerable. She knew it, and she understood it. He had nothing to be jealous of where she was concerned—but had she really made that clear enough to him? Obviously, given that Bryce had intended to turn her or kill her, Chuck knew that her current feelings for Bryce were far from…warm. But how much did he really know about Bryce and her, their past together? Not much. That they weren't boyfriend and girlfriend, but that, although significant, wasn't much. Sarah had left a lot to Chuck's imagination. Carina had been an early source of Chuck's understanding of Sarah and Bryce, and Carina knew how to bury the dagger. Even worse, Chuck's first and only real girlfriend had abandoned him only to take up with Bryce. And Chuck had no story about that, either.

Sarah should have told Chuck she loved him, then and there in the trailer before she left. How could she have withheld the words from him then of all times? Had she really used Han Solo's smug line? "I know"? She hadn't said the words meaning to quote Solo, and she hadn't said them smugly, but, _shit_ , what was she thinking? How did Chuck go on and on with her without exhaustion finally claiming him? How long-suffering could a man be, even Chuck? She would tax the patience of Job.

The guard beckoned Sarah to follow. She'd been standing inside the door but staring at the ground. She shook her head and he led her to a room. Another guard was stationed outside it. "Special Agent Walker to see the prisoner. Cleared by Graham."

The guard stationed at the door grinned grimly, "Like everything else down here." He picked up a clipboard and lifted a couple of pages. He looked at the one beneath them, then asked Sarah for her badge. She grabbed it out of her purse and handed it to him. He compared it to the page on the clipboard, then he touched his hand to the scanner and the door to the room unlocked.

Neither guard moved or spoke. Sarah opened the door and walked in.

Bryce was on a bed, propped up, reclining. He looked weak, and he looked thinner, ashen and a little translucent, but otherwise, he looked like Bryce. He opened his eyes as she came in, although she did not think he'd been sleeping. She could see bandages on his arms and a bit of one sticking up past the neck of his hospital gown. Before she could say anything, he whispered fiercely, "The guard should have something for you. To sweep the room. I told Graham I talk only to you, and only after I see you sweep the room for bugs. They've already removed the cameras."

As Sarah turned to go back to the guard, she looked up. There was an empty bracket for a camera, with wires dangling behind it. She opened the door. The guard turned his impassive face to her. "You have something for me."

The guard shrugged, then went to the nurses' desk just up the hall. He came back with the scanner she needed. Taking it from him, she went back inside, turned it on and swept the room.

Bryce watched her carefully, although she could not tell if he was watching her, or watching what she was doing. Maybe both. She finished. Nothing. She looked at Bryce and he nodded once. He held out his hand for the scanner. She gave it to him and he took it and looked at it closely. After turning it over in his hands for a while, and clicking it on and off, he gave it back to her. She put it on the nightstand by his bed.

A chair stood by the wall, and Sarah went over and picked it up. Positioning it beside the bed, but not too close, she sat down and looked at Bryce, waiting.

The consequent silence was not companionable. Bryce just stared at her. Finally, Sarah's annoyance with the whole situation provoked her. "I'm here, Bryce, in the middle of the night, forsaking my"—she blinked—"mission to talk to you. So, talk. Make me understand why I am here."

Bryce shifted position. The was evidently painful. "I will get to that. But humor me. Nice hair color, by the way." He flashed the smile that had always been his best weapon, more trustworthy than his gun. Sarah was unmoved. Whatever he had once had—well, he didn't still have it. Certainly not where she was concerned. He hadn't had it for a long time, even well before Burbank. It had disappeared before he had. "How are you? You look tired—but you also look rested," he concentrated his gaze harder, "composed." He continued to study her and then his eyes enlarged. "You look," his voice altered tone to disbelief, "…you look _happy_." Bryce slumped slightly.

Sarah jerked in her chair. Bryce found that _hard to believe_? That she could be happy? "Why is that so hard to believe, Bryce?"

"Because," he said, a twinge of pain crossing his face, "I've never seen that before." He stopped, reconsidering. "I mean I have seen you happy _about_ things, like successfully finishing a mission or surviving a knife fight. But I haven't seen you just, you know, _happy_." He did not seem all that happy about it. "I guess I didn't know that was possible for you. And it's not the kind of thing you see down here."

"I am happy," Sarah said almost involuntarily, fighting back a smile as Chuck filled her mind, "and there are a lot of things I am happy about too, I guess." Then Sarah sobered, forced herself to remember. Bryce was the man who had intended to turn her to Fulcrum or kill her, and who had been the primary cause of the suspicion she had been under in Burbank. When Bryce believed Chuck was the Intersect, he would have kidnapped or killed Chuck. She forced herself back into blankness. "Why am I here, Bryce?"

"Because the Ring will kill me here sooner or later, and I might as well tell someone what I know, just to get a little of my own back. My pound of flesh. You are the only person I trust."

 _The Ring_? Bryce had been Fulcrum. So, he knew about the Ring? Had he been like Lawton, stationed where Fulcrum and the Ring touched, as it were? " _The Ring,_ Bryce?" Sarah asked as if the term were new to her.

"Don't be coy, Sarah," Bryce half-growled, "Fulcrum couldn't have unraveled without leaving a thread that led the CIA to the Ring. That woman, Chris Parks, she's too good not to have found something. You _know_."

"Tell me what you have to tell me, Bryce," Sarah kept her voice flat.

Bryce's face contorted in pain. He tensed. It passed and he sighed. "First, and most important, there _is_ an Intersect. The Ring knows it and they are devoted to finding it."

"Bryce," Sarah replied, her tone final, "there is no Intersect. It was a ruse. A good one. It effectively ended Fulcrum," and it brought you here, and brought me to Chuck, Sarah added in thought. "You of all people have to know this. Are your meds affecting you? I can call the nurse."

"No, you don't understand. I know that _Carmichael_ doesn't have a computer in his head. No one does. At least not exactly. That's not what I am saying. But there is an Intersect—the idea of using a computer to do what Carmichael was supposed to be able to do was _inspired by real life_. Graham was not trying to _create_ a computer to do something that no one could do, he was trying to build a computer to _re-create_ something someone could—or at one time, anyway, did—do."

Sarah just stared at Bryce. She shook her head. It was too much. Someone could do what Chuck had pretended to be able to do, do it without the aid of a computer? Did that make any sense? "But if we already had an Intersect, why go to all the trouble and expense of trying to re-create it?"

"Because it was," Bryce hunted for the word, " _malfunctioning_. Because it would eventually fail no matter what. I'm not claiming that the existing Intersect could do everything Carmichael— _Bartowski?_ —was supposed to be able to do, but, still, it could do a lot." Bryce's lips compressed in pain. "What's the deal with you and him, anyway?"

"Who?"

Bryce glared at her. "Same old Sarah. Carmichael, that's who."

"There is no deal, Bryce," Sarah frowned, "tell me about the Intersect."

"I don't know much more. I only found this out before Burbank. And I was not supposed to know it. The Ring was on the trail of the real Intersect. I am sure they still are, if they haven't found it yet. They want it or they want it destroyed. They never entirely believed the computer Intersect story. They let Fulcrum chase that for them, on the off-chance there was something to it," Bryce gritted his teeth in anger, but maybe also in pain, "while they worked on locating the real Intersect. I thought they had it backward. My mistake. A costly one."

Sarah was nodding her head slowly.

"But that's not all. The Ring has created its own simple (well, relative to what Carmichael was supposed to have had) form of computer Intersect technology. I'm not sure exactly how the tech works or what they are using it for now or what their plans for it are ultimately, but it allows for the person who has it to retain reams of information—for a while. It's glitchy, and it sometimes has adverse effects on those who use it, but they are making progress stabilizing it. The tech turns a person into a walking flash drive."

"How do you know this, Bryce? You weren't technically part of…the Ring, right?"

"How do I know?" Bryce looked away from her for a second, then back at her. "I overheard a conversation. Oddly enough, I wasn't even eavesdropping. I overheard it by mistake. And I didn't credit the there-is-an-Intersect part of it when I heard it." Bryce shook his head at himself. "I was visiting," Bryce looked away again, then back, "an old friend. Julie Roark."

Sarah took immediate command of her features. Bryce was watching her, to see her reaction. "Julie Roark? Who is she? You overheard her saying all this?"

"She is a college friend of mine—and of Carmichael's. I don't think he…" Bryce paused, "…kept in touch. I did. No, I didn't overhear Julie talking about these things. I overheard her father, Ted. It was late, very late, and Julie wanted a drink—you know, not water, _a drink_ —so I got up," Bryce's tone swaggered despite his pain, "and she told me to get it from her father's bar, in his den. I was just pouring one for myself too, when I heard her father. He and I didn't really get along. So, I ducked into the washroom that adjoins his den. He came in and made a phone call. That's how I overheard." He smiled. _So simple_.

Sarah was listening to all that Bryce said, but she was struck by how he said it. It was how he talked—the bravado, never more than a half-step from smugness. It wasn't self-conscious. It was the _lingua franca_ , so to speak, of male agents she had known. It had always been how Bryce talked. She had heard it so often at the Farm, from male instructors, and from male recruits, that she had stopped hearing it.

She knew she could hear it now because Chuck did not talk like that. It was part of the reason he had fooled her in Burbank. It was part of the reason she loved him. He had re-trained her ear. Not by trying to but just by talking to her as he did—as a person he admired and loved. It was one reason why Chuck's compliments, even when sometimes they were couched in words she had heard before—always seemed new and always moved her: because if Bryce were to say the same words, they would mean something different.

Any compliment Bryce paid her was in part, maybe even in large part, about him more than about her. He called her beautiful, and his point was that he was the one who deserved or captured her beauty. Bryce's compliments were mostly self-congratulations.

Chuck called her beautiful, and the point was that she was beautiful. It had nothing to do with Chuck. He was not claiming her beauty as his, posturing about it. There was nothing self-congratulatory, nothing entitled, in it.

She realized that this difference was there not just in how Bryce and Chuck talked to her, but how they looked at her.

Sarah returned to Bryce's story. "So, you're telling me that Ted Roark is part of the Ring?"

Bryce nodded. "Yes, he is. But, before you ask, Julie's not. Or if she is, she'd the better at lying than anyone…" Bryce's look at Sarah was significant, "anyone I know, anyway. I'd stake my reputation on her not being involved."

"Not much of a stake, Bryce," Sarah commented tersely. She went on without waiting for a response. "So, tell me more about this Intersect tech—what exactly does it do?"

Bryce's eyes were squeezed shut, his body tense again—more pain. After a moment, he opened his eyes and relaxed a little. "I should have let them give me some more painkillers, but I wanted to be sure I was lucid when we talked. Sorry. And, yeah, you're right—not much of a stake. I screwed it all up….

"Look, I don't know much about how the tech works, what it looks like, how it is implemented. All I have are guesses implied by what Roark mentioned on the phone. It allows a person to store data. The person can retrieve that data. Don't know how…" Bryce grimaced, and glanced at the call button on his lap, but went on, "but not by 'flashing', isn't that what Carmichael called it?" Sarah nodded. "The data apparently can be recalled, but it is not responsive to external stimulus. The capacity is not permanent, and, like I said—damn, it _hurts_ —it has side-effects. That's all I can tell you. Sorry, I'm not keeping all this in the best order. It's hard for me to concentrate."

"That's ok. Can you tell me any more about the real Intersect? You said 'it' a few times—but it is a him or her, right? The real Intersect is a human Intersect?" This was all beginning to sound ominous, and weirdly…familiar. Burbank, but not Burbank.

Bryce just nodded without speaking.

"Is this human Intersect under the control of the CIA or the NSA or someone else?"

"I don't think he or she is under the control of any of the agencies—but that is just my guess. The CIA and NSA both got intel from the Intersect, I think, but neither is running the show. Roark laughed on the phone about the situation, said something about how maddening it must be for Graham and Beckman to be given golden eggs but never to gaze upon the laying goose. It sounded like a fairy tale to me at the time. But I was already in the trap that shut on me in Burbank. Uuuhhh..."

"Ok, Bryce, I think that's enough." She started to stand, but he reached out and took her hand.

"No," he pleaded, "stay a little longer. I have something else to say. I can…bear it. High pain threshold. You remember?"

She sat back down, reclaiming her hand. "I remember."

"I just wanted to tell you something, since I may never see you again. I'm sorry for what I did to screw us up. Our…partnership…was as good as that kind of thing has ever been for me." He shut his eyes for a moment.

"My relationship with Julie has been an off-and-on thing for years, off the whole time you and I were...partners. But I knew from the first I was not the love of her life. And, I'm sorry to say it, there has never been a love of my life.

You know that, though, because you are the same as me. We're spies. We can't have loves like that. Spies don't fall in love. Still, you were the closest I got. Maybe that wasn't all that close, but it was something. I've had time to think in here," he gestured at the walls, "to see that I could have, should have, ought to have…well, it doesn't matter now. But I owe you a story about why I left—but I will keep it short.

"I…became jealous of you. You were the better spy. You were the one who typically saved us when we got in trouble. Somehow, that fact, bits and pieces of our missions, leaked out. Some of the guys Langley started calling me Mr. Walker. Other agents, analysts. It all started to get in my head. I mean—you had titles: Ice Queen, Enforcer. Graham liked me a lot, but you were his favorite…" Even now, she thought, she could see jealousy in Bryce's eyes.

"And, it all got more into my head when I realized you were _not_ competing with me. You were a great spy. You knew it. You took…a certain kind of pride in it. But your achievements were not the result of competition or ego—they provided you with something to focus on, so that you would not focus on other things, past things. I didn't know what those other things were, so I got curious. I badgered you. You told me a little, and even that little seemed unbelievable to me. That you had succeeded at some of those missions. That you were still…functioning." Bryce was panting slightly from the pain.

"There was an analyst at Langley. She was one Graham trusted, used a lot. I knew she…was interested in me. So, I worked on her, flirted with her, got her to give me access to your file. It just took some conversation and some smiles. What I saw—the only thing she could get access to—was a redacted version. But even so…

"It rattled me. So many missions. No breaks. So much stress, so much danger. I was…I didn't…" he glanced around the room, his hunt for a phrase showing in his attempt to find something other than her to fix he gaze on, "Anyway, I couldn't figure it out. Even redacted…that file...it was the file…"—his eyes finally met hers for a second before flicking away after his final words— "…of a monster, of someone not quite…human. You could keep from focusing on that file…" Bryce's eyes were puzzled, "but I couldn't."

The silence in the room became as thick as its concrete walls. A gray, heavy silence.

Bryce groaned quietly, but in the silence, it almost seemed a scream. "I'm sorry, Sarah, but that's how I reacted. I became afraid of you. After that, I couldn't stay your partner. I know…I know…I am using a double-standard. I've done things that disturb my sleep." He stopped. Sighed. Looked ill for a moment. "Comparable things. But you had done so many." He shook his head. "I'm not saying this clearly." He paused, biting his lip hard against his obviously increasing pain. "It wasn't primarily the numbers. I know that it wasn't like all of your missions ended with someone being terminated. No. It...It was your whole life, how you did it: you never stopped. You just kept going. Mission after mission. As best I could tell, you were speeding up. Not slowing down. Maybe that's how you kept from focusing on it, by adding to it...And I was looking at a _redacted_ file." Sharp wince. "The goddamn Terminator."

"And by that point, Fulcrum was recruiting me…The flattery, the money…I even started to half-believe some of their half-baked slogans…And the things about you that made me jealous of you now also made me afraid of you. Things between us had been strained and they were just getting worse, so…"

"So, you left. Me, the CIA." Sarah's voice was dry ice. As Bryce finished talking, she felt herself shut down, her heart frost over. Bryce's words were incantatory: they conjured the Sarah he described. She solidified from a human woman into a moving ice sculpture, cold, lovely, deadly, but not alive.

Unfeeling. Daughter of glaciers. Back in her Ice Age.

Absolute zero.

"That's enough, Bryce. Is there anything else?" She was surprised she could not see her breath as she spoke, she was so cold.

"Just this. Don't trust Graham. Fulcrum thought he could be turned—bought or blackmailed. If Fulcrum thought it, I bet the Ring does too. Maybe he already has been." Bryce let his shoulders fall and punched his call button, calling for a nurse.

"Ok, Bryce. Good luck." She stood up to leave.

"Sarah?" He asked as she walked away.

She did not turn, took another step. "Yes?"

"You're happy. Why? Because you are a spy, or despite it? Oh, and good luck with Chuck."

She stopped. She turned to look at him and he just smiled weakly. She nodded. And then she left, marching alongside the guard on a reverse course. The helicopter started as soon as she appeared. She climbed up and belted in.

At Bryce's mention of Chuck's name, she felt herself begin to thaw. As the helicopter climbed, she continued to warm. Once they were underway, she could feel again. She was a human woman. The Ice Queen had abdicated.

She was not the same old Sarah.

}o{

She gazed out over the fields. The sun was just beginning to overpower the night. A rosy glow backlit the horizon.

Knowing her, Bryce had been afraid of her as Chuck never had. Even when they first met, when Chuck had extra reasons to doubt her because of the suspicion she was under, he believed her, believed in her, trusted her. And Chuck had not only seen her entire file, he had crystalline recall of it all. Chuck, no-Red-Test, 'white collar'-spy Chuck. Chuck, joking about his girlish screams but facing Meeks Lawton alone. Chuck, admitting his low pain threshold, but taking a beating to save her. Chuck.

Her Chuck.

Bryce could only see the file, not the woman. All too often, Sarah too could only see the file, and not herself. Chuck could see her—and toss the file aside. He could love her, he did love her—her file be damned.

In the deepest part of her, Sarah had always believed _she_ was damned, damned because of that file. If there were a final judgment, that file would be open beside the judgment seat. The verdict would be swift and sure and wholly expected.

 _Why couldn't she leave the spy life_? Not because there was nothing she could be other than a spy, though she sometimes thought about it that way. No, the reason was that living the spy life was her chosen punishment, her penance. But for what? _For living the spy life_. She was doing penance for her penance. She was voluntarily punishing herself by living a life that constantly supplied more reasons to voluntarily punish herself. She had imprisoned herself in a bottomless spiral, an abyss of self-loathing that always held yet deeper reaches of self-loathing.

Chuck stopped her spiral. He pulled her from the abyss. He loved what she too often believed unlovable. Chuck.

Her Chuck.

She smilingly thought of her conversation yesterday morning with Jan and Liz. She wanted to get back to that little trailer as soon as possible—and rodeo her clown. And then she was going to tell him things, lots and lots and lots of things. One in particular. She'd been welcomed to her life; it was time she actually stepped into it.

She sprinted from the helicopter to the waiting car when she landed. Fishing in her purse, she finally found her phone. She would delay calling Graham until after she told Chuck what Bryce had told her. She sent Chuck a heart emoji. She had never sent an emoji, and certainly not a heart. But it would do. Until she could tell him. In person. As she climbed into the car, her phone beeped. Chuck had sent her a heart emoji in response. She thrilled to see it.

Not the same old Sarah.

Not that damned Sarah anymore. Never again.

}o{

Sarah was gone. A day that began with Chuck waking up and finding her missing would end with him going to sleep and missing her. Terribly.

He worked for a while on the notation on Antonio's papers, but still did not know what to make of it. Chuck was finding it hard to concentrate. He missed Sarah so much he ached. And knowing where she went made the ache burn. He knew Bryce was not now any competition for Sarah's heart. But Chuck still felt twinges of inadequacy in comparison to Bryce as he was when the two of them were the Anderson's. Bryce was a real spy. Made of metal. Chuck was a mock-up spy, made of wires and plastic. That Bryce, that real spy, had not only had Sarah, he had had Julie, too. But that Bryce did not exist anymore. Perhaps he never had. Chuck needed to stop comparing himself to a person who no longer existed, perhaps never existed, except in Chuck's imagination.

Chuck couldn't concentrate on the papers, but he needed something to do, something to think about. Getting his clown costume out of the closet, he went over it, making sure there were no tears, no busted seams. He really liked clowning. He wasn't sure he was built for the gypsy life that circus performers lived, but he would enjoy finding some way to perform even after the mission ended.

He was finding that making people laugh was difficult and fascinating work. Once in costume and makeup, you had to remember that anything you did was understood by the audience as clowning. If you shook your head and waved your arms and said, "I'm not clowning now", they would understand that as part of your clowning. This meant that there was tremendous pressure on every facial change, every movement. The degree of self-awareness it required was exhausting—and that was without adding in how physical a routine or an act could be.

Chuck discovered no problems with his costume. As he was putting it away, he heard a knock on the door and the sound of muffled laughter. He opened the trailer door to find Jan and Liz standing there, both in robes over pajamas and wearing slippers. Liz had a bottle of wine and Jan had three plastic wine glasses.

"Hey, Chesko," Liz piped. "We saw the light on and we noticed that Sabre left, so we thought we'd come over for a nightcap. Ok with you?"

Chuck smiled at them gratefully. "Yeah, that's sure ok by me. Come in."

They sat with him around the tiny table in the trailer. Liz poured everyone a glass of wine. Jan seemed a little uncomfortable. Chuck picked up a glass from in front of Liz and moved it in front of Jan. "So, Jan, what's up?"

"Sarah didn't leave because of any…" Jan glanced sideways at Liz, "…problem between you two, did she?"

"No, no. It wasn't anything like that. A friend of hers got into some trouble and she went to see if she could help. She should be back tomorrow. I guess it's possible she could be back before we head to Georgia tomorrow, but if not, she'll catch up with us there."

"She was upset this morning. I just wanted to be sure you guys were ok."

"I appreciate it. Yeah, yeah, we're fine." Chuck did believe it, although he was certainly anxious about why Sarah had been upset.

Liz chimed in. "And, well, other than this morning, Sabre sure looks fine—you know what they say about guys with big red…feet."

Jan closed her eyes but said nothing. Chuck choked a bit on his wine. "Um, you know those feet are fake, right?"

Liz pouted. "A girl can dream."

"Say, did you see Juvi at the lunch show today," Jan asked, hoping to keep Liz from providing any details of what a girl could dream, "with the kids?"

"No," Chuck answered, taking a drink of his wine, "but Bimbam showed up and took his place. I guess Juvi wasn't feeling well and Antonio sent him back to his trailer."

That tickled Liz. "Can't keep communicable clowns close to kids, clearly. Contagion quotient climbs quickly."

Jan reached over and gently laid her hand over Liz's mouth, so that little could be heard but more repetitive 'k' sounds. Jan grinned at Chuck. "Kid can't quit."

Chuck laughed silently. "Why'd you ask about Juvi—ok, I can't keep calling him that." Liz had removed Jan's hand and giggled when Chuck said that. "Why'd you ask about Reggie?"

"No real reason. It's just that when we were all sitting out a while ago, after you and Sarah left, he mentioned that The Tank broke down. I couldn't figure out when he'd have had time to take it out."

Chuck was puzzled by that. "The Tank' was everyone's name for an old pickup that traveled with the circus. Antonio owned it—or Chuck assumed he did. But it was in a sense community property, available to be driven any time you could find it. You were supposed to make sure the gas tank was full when you brought it back. Mostly it was used for runs to the grocery store, the liquor store or the hardware store. Having it break down on you made you a Jonah for a week, a source of ill-luck to the circus. It was a tough break for Reggie. He'd be picked on hard for the next seven days.

"Maybe he went to get some medicine. Although he didn't really look ill tonight." Chuck puckered his lips in thought, then shrugged. "I dunno."

Liz looked speculative all at once. "Say, what do you think would happen if a clown got coulrophobia? Would he run funny from himself? Maybe Juvi's got fear of Juvi?"

"Ok, Liz," Jan said, standing, wine in one hand, and with the other waving for Liz to get her wine and follow. "On that reach, we will leave."

Liz pouted again. "Say, Jan, since Sabre's not here to do her wifely duties, I could stay. I could wrap me around Chesko's big red feet like a pussycat."

Chuck dropped his head on the tiny table. _Thunk._ Liz giggled triumphantly, throwing her hands in the air for a second and bouncing and turning in place, then she followed Jan out of the trailer.

The last Chuck heard of them was Jan's elongated "Stooooppp, pleeeassee" and Liz's faux-plaintive parting shot, deliberately just loud enough to carry to Chuck: "But he's tall enough that Sabre could rent out the first floor or the second. You know, whichever one she's not currently using."

* * *

 **A/N2** Annnndd…on that reach, I take my leave of you until next time. Tune in for Chapter 17, "Kicking Sawdust". Chuck and Sarah talk. No, really. No, _really._ The investigation gets cranked up. And the Calliope plays and plays and plays.


	17. Chapter 17: Kicking Sawdust

**A/N1** Greetings from Erehwon, Ohio, where I grew up. Deep in Appalachia. Here's the next chapter of our mission. Pieces are almost all in place.

Most of this written in hospital waiting rooms. But all now seems ok.

Don't own Chuck.

* * *

 **Turned Tables**

 _The Circus Days and Nights Mission_

* * *

February 13, 2008  
Outside Columbia, South Carolina  
Circus Maximus Camp  
6:04 am

* * *

CHAPTER 14 Kicking Sawdust

* * *

It was dawn. A new day. But Chuck had not awakened to it yet.

 _Beep, beep, beep_.

His phone.

He reached up and grabbed it from the little, recessed headboard, knowing Sarah would still be gone but sorry to realize that she was. Sarah. She had just sent him a text. An emoji? Sarah Walker did not send… _What_? A heart. Sarah Walker had sent him a heart emoji. He rubbed his eyes. But the little heart on the screen remained there, telling tales.

Warmth rushed over Chuck from his head to his feet. And he thought of their circus act, of Sabre and Chesko, and their hearts. He sent Sarah a heart emoji in return, whispering as he did so, "I love you so much, Sarah." He didn't put his phone back in the recess. He held it to his chest.

He needed to get up soon and make final preparations for the caravan to Savannah, Georgia. It was a short push—a couple of hours and change. Almost everything was ready. He still felt warm all over from Sarah's message. He fell back to sleep.

He had been asleep for a little while when he woke again. The trailer was moving, swaying slightly, almost like a boat at sea. He sat up quickly. _What the hell?_ Then he heard a giggle. Liz. She was on one side of the trailer and Jan, presumably, was on the other, and they were managing to move it, first one pushing, then the other.

Liz crowed, "If the trailer's rockin', we've come knockin'. Come on Chesko! Time to get this love shack on the road!"

The two of them began singing the B-52's song. "Love shack, baby, love shack/Bang, bang on the door, baby!/Knock a little louder, baby!..." Chuck thought they sounded off-key—but with that song, it was hard to tell.

"I'm up, I'm up," Chuck groaned, loudly enough to be heard by the women. "Be out in a minute."

}o{

When Chuck got outside, he slipped on the leather jacket he had in his hand. The weather had cooled.

It was still sunny, and by midday, the jacket might be too much, but for now, he needed it. Jan and Liz joined him, Jan handing him a big styrofoam cupful of scalding coffee. No one said anything for a few minutes. They stood together and watched the Big Top come down.

It happened fast. The seats and interior items removed, the tent was brought down in practiced concert. So much was happening at once it was hard to take it in. Chuck sipped his coffee and told Jan and Liz, when they asked to double-check, that Sarah was not back yet. Chuck had everything ready; he only needed to walk through the trailer once more to make sure that he did not leave something out that could roll or fly around while he drove.

He looked at the emoji on his phone again and his face broke into a wide grin. Jan bumped his shoulder. "Text from the wife?"

"Um, yeah. I guess," he said looking around, "that she'll have to catch up with us in Savannah. Looks like we are going to pull out soon."

"Yeah," Liz agreed, "and that's why we had to wake you up from your woody dreams of Sabre."

It was true: and before Chuck could hide it, he blushed. Liz noticed and chortled low in her chest.

"Hard with her, hard without her—it's just hard, eh, Chesko?" She skipped away, toward her trailer. Jan gave Chuck a _what-can-I-do-about-it?_ shrug and trailed Liz.

Chuck laughed and looked out toward the highway. Sarah. He stood for a while, trying to will her to appear. No luck. He wanted to hold her so much his arms and hands ached, like they had after the fight with Coombs in the mine.

"Hey, Chuck?"

Chuck turned to find Rastelli walking toward him. Rastelli was the circus' jack-of-all-trades. A clown, mostly, and a good one, though he only did gags and juggled. But he was a miraculous juggler. Chuck assumed 'Rastelli' was the man's last name, but he wasn't sure.

Rastelli also helped with carpentry and mechanical problems and almost anything anyone needed help with. He was universally loved. He had helped Chuck and Sarah paint the props for their act. Some nights, he was the person who crawled out with the painted police car as the act ended. Even when he wasn't, he almost always showed up for their act.

At nearly seventy, Chuck guessed, his posture was not what it once was, and his large, bearded head hung a little forward on his shoulders. He shaved irregularly—both in the sense that he did not do it every day and in the sense that when he did it, he rarely managed to be wholly clean-shaven. He had watery blue eyes and a full set of his own teeth. He did not own a car or a truck, and Chuck was not entirely sure where he slept. Rastelli was well-known around the circus for bumming rides. Chuck assumed he slept in a tent somewhere, maybe he slept under the Big Top.

"Hey, Rastelli! How're you this morning?"

"Good, Chuck. Say, I heard Jan say Sarah's not riding with you this morning. Mind if I tag along?" He gestured toward himself with his coffee cup, as if Chuck might have known who Rastelli meant.

Chuck was glad for the request. He needed something to do other than counting the mile markers and hankering for Sarah. "Sure, Rastelli, happy to have the company."

They got in the older Suburban that Chuck and Sarah used to pull the trailer, and joined the line of other circus trailers heading toward the highway. Rastelli settled in and sipped his coffee in silence. He was also known around the circus for that—for silence. He could hold his peace.

For a while, Chuck was satisfied to just ride along in relaxed silence, but then he noticed the mile markers and ached for Sarah. He began to want to talk.

As if on cue, Rastelli rotated his big, shaggy head toward Chuck. "Your wife is a woman who knows sorrow."

That pronouncement had not been expected. It took Chuck a moment to regroup. "Yeah," he flicked his gaze from the road to Rastelli, who was staring at him with his watery blue eyes—watery, but penetrating, "she is. She's had a difficult life. Her childhood was…not good."

"And the years after childhood, not much better, I'm thinking?" Rastelli continued to stare at Chuck. Chuck was unsure what to say. How much of this was his to share, setting aside worries about blowing their cover?

But Rastelli turned back to the windshield. He sipped his coffee for a while. He did not seem to notice that Chuck had not answered his question—that, or Rastelli did not seem to care. After a long silence, Rastelli went on as if Chuck had answered.

"I don't know Sarah's sorrows, obviously, and I don't need to know them. They are hers. And yours.

"But I see the sorrows in the depths of her eyes, and although you are not what she feels sorrow about," Rastelli's stare softened, "she feels it because of you."

"I don't understand," Chuck said, squirming a little, "what do you mean?"

"She's been running from her sorrow. For a long time. But when you're not looking at her, and she's looking at you, she knows that being with you requires that she stop running."

"I've never said anything like that..."

"No, I've watched you too, Chuck, and you wouldn't. But you want things from her that she can't give you if she's running from her sorrow. Things she wants to give you—and give to herself.

"She's demanding this from herself. If she does it, she'll need you. Not just to help her bear her sorrow, but to help her understand that she needs to stop treating her present as a part of her past, and to start treating it as a part of her future. She knows she has a future. You've shown her that, I suspect. But she needs to let go of the past and embrace her future."

Rastelli seemed to be finished. He took a long pull from his coffee. Chuck mulled over what Rastelli told him. "That's articulate for a juggler," Chuck commented, smiling, grateful.

Rastelli took another pull on his coffee: "What can I say? I'm good at juggling, good at coffee, and good at talking—sometimes." Rastelli placed his cup in the center console. He pulled his old denim jacket closer around him, wedged himself in between the seat and the door, and went to sleep, as though the conversation had never happened.

Chuck went back to the mile markers. He was considering Sarah and sorrow.

}o{

It was nearly noon before Chuck got the trailer positioned, woke Rastelli, and got situated. Once he was done, he walked out to the end of the new row of trailers and stood looking at the highway. Sarah should catch up with him soon.

}o{

Sarah sat back in frustration. Her CIA driver was driving her crazy. Not driving her to Savannah, not to Chuck.

He'd start subtly hitting on her shortly after she got in the car. She had tried politely to get him to understand that there was nothing happening and that she wanted to be left alone. But he kept going, evidently thinking that she was being coy. She made sure he saw the engagement rings she was wearing.

It wasn't lost on her that she was waving fake rings, that they were part of the cover. The driver hadn't taken the hint. Eventually, Sarah just stopped responding to him at all, tuning him out and looking out the window, contemplating what she would tell Chuck when she saw him. The driver's voice became white noise.

Sarah returned her gaze to her rings. What if Chuck were to propose to her now? It had only been a little over a day since his mention of marriage had panicked her. But she knew she had crossed a threshold in that time.

There was no hurry—but Sarah was no longer panicked. The rings she was wearing were not the rings she wanted Chuck to give her—but he had given them to her when they left DC, and, for her, now, a promise. She promised herself that someday the rings she wore would be the rings she wanted.

Her current problem was that her annoying driver was not now driving; the car had broken down. Sarah was waiting for another to come and take her on to Savannah.

Her driver had taken this as a divine sign to start hitting on her again, and she was seriously considering punching him if that's what it took to get him to stop. She sent Chuck a text, briefly telling him that she was running behind. It was silly, but she hated to send it. She had wanted the communication that followed up their exchange of emoji hearts to be face-to-face, body-to-body.

Sarah was getting frustrated. The driver, forcing himself on her attention, attempted to hand her a piece of paper, a phone number. She looked at him in total disbelief.

"Just in case," he smiled unctuously, "you get back to DC and find yourself lonely. I know you agents—those rings don't mean anything, not even if they are real. Spies don't fall in love, not really. Even if they get married."

"You have got to be kidding me. You see these rings," Sarah held up her left hand, the backs of her fingers facing the man, "they mean something to me—more than you could ever imagine." _More than I could have ever imagined._ "And if I don't get to the man who is wearing the ring that matches mine soon," Sarah narrowed her eyes, effectively underlining each word, "I am going to vent my unhappiness on everyone who is near me," Sarah ended with a sweet smile, spinning a knife in her right hand that she seemed to have produced from thin air. The knife rendered her smile terrifying, giving form and substance to her threat.

Her driver turned around, yanking out his phone and pounding the screen with a finger. "How far away are you? Well, _hurry_."

}o{

Chuck's phone rang. He looked at the screen. Not Sarah. His mom. He was standing outside the trailer, watching them finish the Big Top.

"Hey, Mom. What's up?"

"Chuck. What's that sound?" Clipped, efficient, puzzled.

Chuck listened. "Oh, that. The Calliope. Yeah, it plays a lot. They are double-checking it right now after transit."

"You should get hazard pay. So, how is running away to the circus working out for you and Sarah?"

"Fine. We've been settling in and are only now beginning our investigation. As expected, she is a natural knife thrower and tumbler. As less expected, it turns out I am a passable clown."

"No, Chuck, that was expected." Frost's laugh was real, but wheezy and curt.

"I've been digging," she continued, her inflection rising, "on Beridze. It took some doing, but it turns out that he was not just an arms dealer and money launderer for terrorist groups. He had ties to Fulcrum. It's still unclear whether he was _in_ Fulcrum or just _working for_ Fulcrum. But of course, in the underworld, that distinction is notoriously vague. I don't have any firm information connecting him to Graham beyond what you found, but I am still digging. I do know that Graham made three off-ledger trips to Batumi in the last couple of years."

"How did you discover that?"

"No mistake about it." Frost spoke each word with emphasis.

"Never suggested it was a _mistake_ ," Chuck paused, "Mom."

Frost ignored him. "I'm hoping to know more soon. Maybe as early as tomorrow. Valentine's Day, Chuck. You know that, I hope?" His mom's voice was teasing but pointed.

 _Valentine's Day?_ Shit. Shit. Circus life. Spy mission. Chuck had lost track of the dates—or their meaning. Either way, he had not put it together. "Of course, I know, Mom. I'd never forget something like that."

"Right. Well—you know what they say, Chuck."

"No, Mom," Chuck groused, "what do they say?"

"Spies don't do Valentine's Day." Chuck knew his mom had meant that as a joke, but he heard her voice catch as she said it. There was a long pause as she composed herself, but her voice was damp as she spoke. "Take care of what you care about, son." Frost ended the call.

Chuck put his phone away, shaking his head.

Valentine's Day? How on earth had he lost track? A photographic memory worked fine when you knew you needed to remember. It didn't mean that everything you needed to remember you did remember, especially if you didn't know you needed to remember. In that situation, he was like everyone else. His Minolta memory was no advantage. He was dependent on luck, good or bad. Shit.

Since the Suburban was still attached to the trailer, Chuck headed along the line of trailers, until he got to the far end. He crossed over to the side of trailers facing away from the rising Big Top. The Tank was there. Chuck looked at his watch. He should have time to get into Savannah and a gift for Sarah before she got back.

He got in the Tank. He pulled the visor down, holding out his hand to catch the keys, but he missed them and they fell to the floor. As Chuck reached down to get them, he reached under the edge of the bench seat. He felt for the keys but did not find them. But his hand found something. He pulled it out from beneath the seat. It was a folded paper bag. Chuck unfolded it. A Roark Industries bag. Chuck noticed that the bag had a tag stapled to it. _In-Store Pickup_. _Antonio Cristiani._ The date for pickup was yesterday.

This must have been where Reggie had gone. The time stamp on the tag matched the time when Reggie was gone. Chuck folded the bag back and put it back under the seat. He realized that the truck keys had bounced forward, not backward, so he reached down and grabbed them.

Chuck drove the Tank into Savannah. He stopped at a coffee shop and bought an espresso and asked if there was a good jewelry store nearby. The young woman working behind the counter stared off into the distance for a moment and then told him that there was. She gave him directions. And then Chuck had another thought.

"Is there a Roark Industries store in town?"

She nodded her close-cropped head immediately. "Yeah, there is, it's actually not far from the jewelry store. A couple of blocks. It's an amazing place. So, high tech and sleek. I like to go in just to look around."

Chuck smiled. He had to admit he like the RI stores he had been in too, although it had been a while since he had visited one. They chatted about computers for a bit. He finished his espresso and thanked the barista.

He got back in the Tank and he drove to the jewelry store. He looked around for a while, then found something he thought Sarah would like. Once it was wrapped, he walked the two blocks to the RI store. He walked in and gazed around, blinking and grinning. It was like the bridge of a starship, all silver, gray, and navy. Desktops dominated once side of the store. Laptops the other. Along the walls were neat displays of cords and peripherals.

Chuck wandered around, rather obviously swinging the bag from the jewelry store. He wanted to seem like a browser, someone lured by the gleam of the RI store. He was evidently successful; none of the salespeople approached him, although a couple of them noticed him and smiled. After poking around for a while, he made pulled his phone out as if it had vibrated and pretended to answer it. He talked quietly for a minute, then walked toward the service desk, talking more loudly as he approached.

"…Sure, Antonio, I'm not only nearby, I am in the store. I will ask. In-store delivery, right," He took the phone from his ear but did not make any move to end the call, "let me ask." The man behind the counter had witnessed all this.

Chuck held his phone out. "My boss, Antonio Cristiani, is on the phone. He wants me to ask if you have an in-store delivery for him."

The RI employee frowned. "I can't give you an in-store delivery if you aren't the person it is for or that person has not arranged for you to pick it up by calling ahead and supplying your information." The man looked at Chuck's phone.

Chuck nodded sympathetically. "Oh, I know. I get it. I'm not picking it up, he just wanted me to find out if it was here, since I am here...It probably hasn't arrived yet." Chuck waved the phone. The man's frown grew, but he asked for the name again. Chuck gave it to him. The man pulled a three-ring binder from beneath the counter. He opened it and ran his finger down the page.

"Yes, there will be an in-store delivery for him here tomorrow afternoon. It hasn't arrived yet, as you said." As the man finished, another customer approached the desk with a question. Chuck used the distraction to lean down and get a good look at the page in the binder. There was no description of what was in it, but its point of origin was not the same as the others on the page, the RI factory. No, it's point of origin was RI HQ in LA. Reggie had indeed signed for it. Before Chuck left, he stopped by a large poster near the door. It was a drawing of the US, with RI store locations marked by navy dots. He thought about the circus' route before, the one Graham had told them about. Yes, an RI store near every stop.

Chuck left the store and walked thoughtfully back to the Tank.

}o{

Sarah's second driver had been a very competent young woman. She and Sarah chatted pleasantly enough on the rest of the drive. Even so, Sarah was so eager to be back that when the woman let her out on the edge of camp, she had to fight down the urge to sprint to the trailer. Better not to attract more attention. She forced herself to walk.

As she walked along, she passed folks who waved and smiled. Rastelli gave her an especially warm smile when she passed him. He was working to put up a sideshow tent. Reggie hurried by, his strange walk exaggerated by his pace, ane he waved distractedly when he noticed her. She didn't see Jan or Liz.

She found the trailer in the line where she expected it, and smiled to herself when she saw the sign on it. Chesko. Chuck. The door was unlocked and she entered quickly, succumbing to her need to hurry at last. Chuck was in the bed, under a blanket on top of the made bed, napping. Sarah walked over to run her hand through his curls, and stopped: it was not Chuck. There were curls, but they were strawberry blond. Blue eyes opened beneath them and Liz smirked lazily.

"Hey, Sabre. You're finally back?" Liz stretched like a cat; Sarah could almost hear her purr. "I hope you don't mind…"

"Is Chuck here?" Sarah scanned the trailer quickly. Hard to hide well over six feet of Chuck in there. "If Chuck is here…" Her comment frayed into a low growl.

Liz threw the blanket back, holding out her hands in a placating gesture. "No, no, no, Sabre. God, no. Jan insisted on practicing her clarinet at our place and I was tired. Have you heard a bad clarinet player practice? It's the soundtrack to Dante's _Inferno_. No, actually, it's crueler than that." Liz smiled hesitantly, glancing nervously at Sarah, checking Sarah's hands—for knives, presumably. "I was trying to bum a place to nap and came by and the door was unlocked. Think of me as strawberry Goldilocks. Chuck's gone off someplace. I figured it would be ok if I napped here."

Sarah felt the tension leave her body. Liz looked strangely unlike Liz—serious and genuinely apologetic. Her mussed hair and her—Sarah just noticed—SpongeBob SquarePants pajamas completed the unLiz-like look. Sarah smiled. "That's fine, Liz. I can imagine what that clarinet sounds like. I had no idea Jan played."

"Oh, she doesn't; she practices. She just forces air through the thingy while fingering the keys. She makes noises, not music." Liz stepped into her tennis shoes as she spoke. They had been beside the bed, untied.

"Say, Sabre, is everything ok. Chuck said you had to visit a friend who was having some trouble?"

"Yes. Yes, that's right. She's going to be…ok." Sarah stayed non-committal since she wasn't sure if Chuk had said more.

"Good. Well, glad you are back. Chesko's been scanning the horizon for your ship all day. He's going to be excited to see you.

"You know, Sarah, all kidding aside—and you get me like this maybe once or twice a year—that man loves you like I have never seen a man love a woman. I get that you two are still figuring some things out, but I wonder if you know just how lucky you are? To be loved like that, by a man like that—wow! _That is something_."

Sarah dropped her head and blushed. "I know, Liz, really I do, even if I may not always show it. I don't deserve him."

"Deserve? Don't talk crazy. I didn't mean anything like that. No person deserves another person. A person is always a gift, not payment for services rendered. If you get a gift like Chuck, you do all you can to be thankful for it. Treat it like the gift it is. And you are his gift, Sarah, and he is thankful. He looks at you…well," Liz choked up—she really was unLiz-like—her eyes misting, "let's just say Jan and I enjoy watching Chuck look at you. We both feel better about the world."

Liz sat down on the bed and tied her shoes. She stood and grabbed the blanket and folded it, returning it to the foot of the bed. "Thanks, Sarah. Oh, by the way, your absence has been _hard on_ our boy, if you know what I mean." Smirk.

Sarah shook her head. "Serious Liz is gone already?"

"Yeah, she doesn't stay long. Tends to be…preachy." She reached out and took Sarah's hand for a moment, then hugged her. She left as she usually did, trailing a cloud of giggles.

}o{

Chuck got back to the trailer. When he came in, Sarah had just finished remaking the bed. Wordlessly, she grabbed him and hugged him to her as she fell back onto the bed. The kiss was passionate, full of urgent need.

Sarah pulled back after a moment—although she was panting and her eyes were all desire. "Wait, Chuck. I want this worse than you, I promise, but Graham is going to keep calling. I haven't answered because I wanted to talk to you first. I need to tell you what Bryce told me."

They sat down on the bed together and she told him about the human Intersect, the tech the Ring had developed, about Ted Roark, and about Bryce's warning about Graham. Chuck sat silently for a few minutes after she told him, eyes closed, thinking it through quickly. "Ok, that's a lot to take in. But I have a couple of things to add." He told her about his mom's call, and about Graham's off-ledger Batumi trips. Then about finding the RI bag and his impromptu recon of the RI store.

They turned their information this way and that, deciding, at last, to tell Graham only about the Ring tech. They had to tell him something. But their uncertainty about him made it hard to know what to share. Graham _presumably_ knew about the human Intersect. It was best that he did not know that they knew. If Graham had been turned by the Ring, letting him know about Ted Roark was a bad idea.

Sarah called Graham and shared the information. She weathered Graham's anger, telling him only that she had phone trouble on the return trip. He asked about how the mission was going, and Sarah told him about finding the papers in Antonio's office and that they were following up some leads the documents suggested. She omitted their suspicions about RI and their knowledge of communication between Antonio and Beridze.

When she got off the phone, Sarah blew out a breath in relief. Chuck laughed, his laugh tinctured with bitterness. "To think we got to know each other because Graham thought you might be Fulcrum, and now we're partners, and a couple, and we think Graham might be part of the Ring. Talk about turned tables."

Sarah agreed. "We're in a predicament here, working for a man we don't trust, hunting an enemy we don't fully understand and can't recognize, an enemy that may include our boss in its membership. We are going to have to be very careful from now on, Chuck."

"I know. I know. Things are getting a little crazy.

Sarah stood up. "That's done, for now. I am going to shower, assuming you filled the water heater? Good. Too bad there's barely room for one in there." She shot him a salacious smile as she unbuttoned her blouse.

}o{

Chuck had stretched out on the bed as best he could as he waited for Sarah to get out of the shower. He had taken off his shoes. He had his hands united behind his head, staring at the ceiling. Sarah came out of the shower. She had dried off, but her skin was warm and flushed. She had put nothing on. She stood beside the bed and watched Chuck as he looked at her. A slow smile spread across her face, joy mixed with thanks mixed with desire. She bent down and unbuttoned his shirt.

When Chuck's clothes were off, Sarah covered him with her. Chuck reveled in the sensation of her skin, so soft and so warm, supercharged with desire. Sarah pushed herself up and back, and then sank with a prolonged sigh. Chuck's body shook with passion; he moaned. She leaned forward until he was staring into her bluer-than-blue eyes, deep reservoirs of emotion now open to him. Softly, slowly, secretively, she whispered to him. "I, Sarah Walker, love you, Charles Carmichael. With all my heart."

And then she closed her eyes and began to move—softly, slowly, secretively, at first, until the urgency of their love and need overtook her.

}o{

Sarah pressed herself against Chuck's side, warmed through and through. Her head pillowed on his chest. She told him the rest of the story of her visit to Bryce, about Bryce's account of what had gone wrong between them, about Bryce's jealousy and fear. Chuck listened without comment; he just stroked Sarah's back as she told him, made sure she knew he was there, listening.

Then she told him about her first visit to the prison, years ago. She couldn't look at him. And it took her time to start the story. But after fits and starts, he eyes full of tears, she gained some momentum and went on.

"…So, I knew the prisoner knew where the terrorists had the hostages. I knew we would have a decent chance to save them if we could only find them. I asked. I begged finally." She looked up into Chuck's eyes, desperate for him to believe her. She saw that he did. "He wouldn't tell me anything. I offered to see if his sentence could be reduced. Nothing. He wanted those hostages to die. Twelve of them, some of them kids. He just sat there in silence and then he smirked at me. He was a smirker," she whispered the last as her eyes fell. "I…well, I snapped."

She stopped. Her voice thickened. "And I snapped three of his fingers, Chuck, wrenched them violently. I heard the bone break, felt it in my hand. But he told me nothing; all I managed to do was to get him to stop smirking. He hurt too much—God!—he hurt too much to smirk…" She pressed the length of her body against him tightly, maximizing contact. She shivered.

"When I left, I got a call. The hostages were dead, all executed earlier that day, just before I went into the prison.

"I was nauseated for days. I couldn't sleep. Even if what I had done had saved those hostages, it was wrong. I hurt him, and I hurt myself. I dreamed of that man with broken fingers, dreamed of breaking fingers, night after night, the nightmare always returning. Weeks, months."

Chuck wiped tears from her cheeks. He took her in a snug embrace.

"Graham made me see a CIA shrink. I made the mistake of telling him that I wanted to die. He took me to mean that I wanted to kill myself, but that wasn't what I meant. I was just trying to…word my despair. How deep it was, how it surrounded me. When I got Graham to start sending me on missions again, I eventually…" Sarah paused, choosing the right shade of phrase, "…put it behind me. It became another in a long line of missions going back to when I finished at the Farm."

She wiped her eyes again and then returned Chuck's hug, holding him as he held her. He reached down and pulled the sheet over them.

"Chuck, what did you think when you first saw my file? Were you afraid of the woman you were reading about?"

Chuck looked directly into her eyes. She had asked him this question, more or less, before, on the plane from Batumi. But he knew she needed to ask again. "Yes and no. I was afraid—and I suppose at the time I would have said that I was afraid of you. But that was not the only reaction I had. Your picture stirred me, Sarah. I mean, yes, God, you are beautiful, but there was something about that picture, about the way you looked at the camera, a defiance in you.

"I really didn't think you were a killer. I thought you were good at killing," he glanced at her but she held his eyes with hers, despite a flinch, "I wasn't sure there was a difference then, but I am now. You see, the difference was knowing you. From the moment you smiled at me at the Buy More desk, I knew that the file came nowhere near exhausting the amazing, wonderful, complicated woman that you are.

"But there were two other things about the file. One, there was no evidence of wanton cruelty in the file…" He paused, looking at her, "…I am guessing that Graham left out the details about the prisoner?" Sarah nodded once. "But even so, that is one incident in almost 200 missions. And there are exculpating factors. But, two, you went out of your way to help innocent people. The story about the prisoner confirms that, even if what you did you regret."

"Sarah, you were basically kidnapped and turned into a spy. Graham was right about you in one way: you proved to be extraordinarily competent. But he was wrong about you in another, much more important way. He believed that you had been corrupted by the life you led with your father. That you had no defiance left in you. No goodness. Now, I don't know much about your life with your father, but Graham was wrong. Graham got more than he bargained for in you, Sarah."

Sarah's eyes were wide with hope. "What do you mean, Chuck?"

"I mean that you have managed to hold onto yourself through all of this. You've been at a loss, but not lost. Mom sees it too.

"Think about our conversation just now. Think about how you reacted to what you did. Think about the fact that you never did it again. Think about the fact that you never killed anyone but targets, unless it was in self-defense. Think about all the things you've done, genuinely, clearly good things, kind things, merciful things, that you were not required to do and that could have gotten you killed.

"You were never just the dispenser of Graham's justice. You were also, and always, merciful, whether Graham cared about mercy or not. Think about Keto and Eka." Sarah was crying again, silently, but she smiled at Chuck through the tears.

Chuck paused, thinking. "I had a friend at Stanford who went on to be an Episcopal priest. He told me one day that the line in the Lord's Prayer, 'Lead us not into temptation', could be paraphrased as 'Keep me from moral adventures.' The point, he said, was that it is hard to survive moral adventures-for anyone. We should want to be spared them if possible. You were forced into a life of moral adventure while you were a girl, against your knowledge, without your consent—and you have survived it, and you saved your heart.

"I know there are issues ahead for us, struggles with your past. I've had my own bad nights. I hope you want a future with me. I want a future with you. But I want you to have a future, whether it is with me or not. I want you to be happy. I, Charles Carmichael, love you, Sarah Walker. With all my heart."

Sarah put her head down on Chuck's chest, her fingers rubbing him gently. "You make me happy, Chuck. I want a future with you, away from the spy life. That's what I want."

She sighed. "I just don't know how we can make it happen until we can figure out what is going on with Graham and the Ring. I worry that Bryce is right about the infiltration of the CIA, the supermax prison. If the Ring finds out I was there, they will want me dead as surely as they want Bryce dead. If Graham is in the Ring, he knows I was there and he will wonder if I have told him all Bryce told me. I don't want to leave until I know this life won't follow us home."

Chuck leaned his head forward and she kissed him. "Home. That's worth fighting for. Ok, Sarah, then let's figure out what's up with the Ring." He gave her a brave grin. But then his gaze became uncertain.

"What is it, Chuck?"

"Do we really think Juvi is in the Ring?"

* * *

 **A/N2** Good question, Chuck. Answers coming. Next chapter, "Clown Alley". Tune in! And drop me a review on your way out. This writing is a kind of lonely business.


	18. Chapter 18: Clown Alley

**A/N1** More from Erehwon, Ohio. We have entered the middle game of the mission, and are finishing up an intra-mission 'interlude'. Dark clouds are gathering over Circus Maximus.

If you're reading and you like the story, please drop me a line. Remember, reading is free but the suggested donation is a review. Many, many thanks for reading and reviewing.

Don't own Chuck. Don't own Valentine's Day. Or any clown school.

* * *

 **Turned Tables**

 _The Circus Days and Nights Mission_

* * *

Wednesday, February 14, 2008  
Outside Savannah, Georgia  
Circus Maximus Camp  
8:32 am

* * *

CHAPTER 18 Clown Alley

* * *

Chuck was standing at the serving table in the cookhouse. He was carefully choosing breakfast for Sarah. She was still sleeping soundly in the trailer. Chuck had slipped out to get Sarah Valentine's Day breakfast, and he was going to take it to her so that she could enjoy it in bed.

He had gone out walking outside the camp and luck had been with him. He'd found a couple of beautiful pink camellias, early blooms. They had fragile, tissue-paper petals, beautifully curved and spiraling outward from the center. He had placed them on the tray.

As he stood completing his choices, Reggie appeared at his side. "Hey, Chuck, good morning!" Chuck returned the greeting. "Antonio's called a meeting of Clown Alley for today at noon—have you heard?"

"No, I hadn't. I thought since he decided not to start up until tomorrow, after Valentine's Day, that we would have the day off. I was hoping, anyway…" Chuck's disappointment was audible.

Reggie shrugged—but then smiled, "Well, it's not all bad. Word's that Antonio is going to put you in the grand finale warm up. You're climbing the clown ladder there, Chesko." Reggie punched Chuck playfully on the arm. "You deserve it. I've never seen a better clown at your stage of the game. You've got a gift."

"Thanks, Reggie, that's nice of you."

Reggie just shrugged again. "Nice flowers, Chuck. Sarah'll love 'em." He bounced away. Chuck turned and looked at the tables of the cookhouse.

Jan waved him over. He walked to the table where she was seated. He put the tray down and Jan examined it. Seeing the camellias, she gave Chuck an enthusiastic thumbs-up. She reached down and grabbed the bag from the jewelry shop and handed it to Chuck.

He had stopped and left it with Jan when he returned to camp yesterday—to hide it from Sarah. The cost of having Jan keep it for him was that he had been obliged to listen to a collection of clarinet squeaks and death gasps that Jan claimed was the Beatles' "When I'm Sixty-Four". Chuck had taken her word for it. She picked up on his lack of enthusiasm, and she had grinned, crooked and self-mocking. "Yeah…I know. Liz told me, 'It sucks so much you should call it "When I'm Sixty-Nine".'" That's a quote." Chuck had laughed out loud and Jan had good-naturedly joined in.

Chuck thanked Jan and grabbed the bag. He asked about Liz, and Jan told Chuck she was working on the trampoline, trying to master a new trick. He thanked Jan and headed back to the trailer.

When he got inside, Sarah was still asleep. He sat the tray down and stowed the bag at the end of the bed. Then he walked to the head of the bed. Bending down, he pressed his lips to hers.

It took her a moment to stir, but when she did, she kissed him back. He could feel her lips stretching into a smile as she did. She started to pull him down, but Chuck gently pulled back. "As much as I would enjoy that, I have something for you that will get cold if you don't have it soon."

Sarah's smiled and licked her lips, her early morning voice husky and full of mischief. "Me too, Chuck."

Chuck's whole body hitched—and he reconsidered resuming the kiss. But he made himself resist. He turned and got the tray. Sarah saw it and she smiled at him, a big, beautiful smile. She sat up eagerly, grabbing the pillows to cushion her back. Chuck put the tray in front of her and he sat down beside her on the bed. She lifted one of the camellias and gazed at it, running her fingers gently along the petals, entranced. "You found these—growing here?"

"Yeah, yeah. I took a walk this morning and found them." Chuck choked up watching her tender enjoyment of the flower. "Sometimes beauty grows where you would never expect it."

She looked up from the flower, her eyes full of emotion and of tears. "Thank you, Chuck. Thank you so much. For yesterday and for today. And for tomorrow."

Chuck retrieved the bag from the bed and took Sarah's wrapped gift out. He handed it to her and she took it eagerly. "A Valentine's Day present? And a valentine?" The valentine was taped to the gift—a picture of Pepe Le Pew, eyes huge and holding a heart, above the caption, _My heart bursts for you_.

Sarah stared softly at it, grinning and wiping her eyes. "You know, this is the first real valentine I've ever gotten—I mean the only one since elementary school. As I told you, I never had a boyfriend in high school, and…well, spies." She carefully put the valentine down beside her, turning the gift in her hands. Her eyes were full of wonder. "Spies don't celebrate Valentine's Day."

"I've heard that," Chuck commented, thinking of his mom for a moment, "but we do, Sarah."

She breathed out all at once then inhaled slowly. "Yes, Chuck, we do." She began to open the box, careful not to tear the wrapping paper. Under the silver-striped paper, the box was red velvet, long and flat. Sarah opened it. Inside was a necklace of wispy, delicate gold, with a pendant—a ruby, a heart surrounded by white diamonds. Sarah lifted it out of the box and held it up. It sparkled and glinted and shimmered as it played in the light. Sarah couldn't speak. She held it out to Chuck and he took it. With beautiful care, he put it on her. She tilted her head up and reached for him with one hand, pulling him to her and kissing him passionately. "I love you, Chuck. It's perfect."

"So are you. I love you too, Sarah."

They kissed again. Again, Chuck pulled away. "Please eat, sweetheart, before it gets cold." He handed her the tray. "Best Valentine's Day. Ever."

"Me too," Sarah agreed, grabbing her fork. She shot him a smile both playful and serious.

After a bite of her scrambled eggs, she looked up at Chuck.

"Really? This is your best Valentine's Day?" Her other hand had traveled, unselfconsciously, to her necklace.

Chuck nodded vigorously. "Not even close, Sarah."

"But, don't you have any Valentine's Day memories?" Sarah was honestly puzzled. She speared another bite of egg, and pointed her fork at him, bite still on it. "Come on, Chuck, really?"

Chuck felt sheepish. "I didn't say I didn't have any memories, but they are not of Valentine's Days that compete with this." He stood and went to look out the small window on the door of the trailer, trying to change the topic by changing location.

Sarah, undeterred, kept after him. "Tell me about a memory, Chuck."

Chuck stared out the window for a second, then he turned and blew out a breath, billowing his cheeks. "Ok. I'll share my most vivid Valentine's Day memory. But you need to promise you'll never tell this story to anyone. Even Ellie doesn't know it."

Giggling lightly, Sarah motioned for him to come back and sit beside her. When he did, she said: "Spill."

Chuck bent forward, resting his arms on his legs. "Ok. Ok. So, I was sixteen. I had the only girlfriend I would have during high school. Cindy. She was cute. Nerdy. A fan of comic books and superhero movies. Played D&D. I was smitten."

"'Smitten', Chuck?" Sarah shook her head.

"Yeah, I get it. But you know, I was sixteen and I'd never been kissed. We'd gone on two dates. Once to a movie and once to a school dance. We'd held hands. The next weekend was Valentine's Day. I wanted to make a big gesture, something that might get me my first kiss, so I planned a surprise. I dressed up like a superhero and was going to surprise her. I made a costume," Sarah's eyebrows shot up at that, "and I put it on and went to her place. I knocked. When she answered the door, I bounded through it. She had friends over and I didn't know. Anyway, there I stood in my costume, arms up in a strong man pose. I was Valentine's Day Man. That was too many letters for my chest, so I shortened it to 'VD Man'. I was standing there in blue tights with a red cape, and I had 'VD Man' on my chest. It wasn't until her friends started rolling that I realized what I had done…I just didn't think about what else the letters might mean..."

Sarah had set her tray aside and was shaking with laughter.

Chuck glanced at her and smiled painfully. "She not only never went on another date with me, she never talked to me again."

Sarah struggled to stop laughing. "I…I'm sorry, Chuck…but the image of you in that…costume, _bounding_ in…"

"And you'll never see me that same way again?" Chuck felt a little downcast.

Sarah leaned forward and grabbed his shirt, pulling him into an eager kiss. When it ended, she leaned her forehead against his. "I love that you were willing to tell me that story, Chuck."

Sarah twisted around and reached under her pillow. Chuck more than half expected her to remove a knife, but it was a letter. She handed it to him, her eyes unsure, vulnerable. "I wrote it on the second half of my ride back here yesterday. My driver gave me the envelope and a piece of paper. Happy Valentine's Day."

Chuck took it from her. "Do you want me to read it now?" She said she did. He opened the envelope, matching Sarah's care with her gift.

He opened the letter. It was written on the back of a blank driver's dispatch form.

}o{

 _To My Chuck,_

 _By the time you read this, if everything goes as I hope, I will have told you that I love you. I know I have hinted at it, and almost said it, and said it while facing the other way. Well, you have been there, so you know._

 _It was never because I doubted my feelings for you. I knew I had fallen for you early in Burbank. That hasn't ever changed. I just couldn't straightforwardly admit it to myself. I hinted at it, and almost said it, and said it to myself with my back turned—I did all that to myself for a long time before I did the same to you._

 _I have always felt things, Chuck. But, for so long, what I felt, and what I thought I was supposed to feel, allowed to feel, were so far apart. I had no one to help me understand that distance or to close it. First, my dad, and then Graham, stood in that distance, encouraging it. The distance grew._

 _Until Burbank. Until you. You helped me to understand that love was always in me, that I was always capable of love, that I could love because I did love. That I was allowed to love. I love you, Chuck. You are my Valentine._

 _Your Valentine,_

 _Sarah_

}o{

When he finished reading the letter, Chuck put it back in the envelope and put it down beside the box for Sarah's necklace. He took her breakfast tray from her, and he undressed as she gazed at him.

They celebrated together. When they could celebrate no more, they wrapped around each other, neither asleep nor awake, holding each other in a dreamy silence.

}o{

Chuck was hurrying toward Antonio's trailer. He would just make it.

He'd almost forgotten the meeting. As he got to the trailer, he saw a long foldout table outside it, and around it were collected all the clowns of the circus—"Clown Alley", as Antonio called these meetings. At one end of the table was an empty folding chair, where Antonio would sit when he joined them. Around the table were Badin, BonBon, Crackpot, Cupcake, Bimbam, Juvi and Greasy. It was everyone, now that Chuck arrived, except Rastelli, but he rarely attended Clown Alley.

Greasy, Marvin, the oldest of the clowns, and the most respected, scowled as Chuck approached. He'd not been happy with Chesko's rise in favor in Circus Maximus, and although he normally avoided Chuck, on the rare occasions they were alone together the air was thick with open resentment. Greasy was seated on the end of the table opposite the empty chair. Juvi, Reggie, waved at Chuck as Chuck sat down on the other side of the table, next to Crackpot, Eric. Crackpot was a good clown and a kind of mime when out of make-up. He rarely spoke but often gestured.

About the time that Chuck got settled and had nodded greetings to the others, Antonio came out of the trailer with a clipboard and a pinched brow. He went to the end of the table but did not sit in the chair.

"Glad to see everyone could make it," he said flatly, his gaze resting for a split second on Chuck. "We have a few things to talk about." Antonio, although in his sixties, still looked like he could be on the trapeze. He was small but roped with muscle. He moved like a much younger man, other than a slight limp, caused by a severe compound fracture in his fall years ago.

Chuck had heard that Antonio had rehabbed like a man possessed, in hopes of returning to the Cristiani family's act, but even though he had made remarkable progress, his injury made him incapable of the exact timing and physical sureness that were absolute requirements of the act. He had pocketed his resentment against his fate, and although he did not generally express it, it was noticeably present, tight and scaly and wound tight inside him.

"First, we have school kids coming for lunch tomorrow, so I expect the normal crew to be there. But I want you, Chesko, to take charge of the lunch shows—I have enough on my plate. Start thinking about a short act that you can do for the kids. Work it out with Juvi and Bimbam." As Chuck nodded, Greasy sat back and crossed his arms. "Try to have the new act ready by the time we get to our next camp. For now, just do what you've been doing."

"I also want you, Chesko, to do a couple of gags in the grand finale warm-up. The ones you've been doing for the kids are great; use them for now. If you have new ideas, show them to me. I want you to start that at the next camp too." Chuck thanked Antonio. Greasy crossed his legs.

"I like what all of you are doing. Well, except you, Reggie. You're inconsistent. Good one show, mediocre the next. You aren't concentrating. Pull it together or you and I are going to have to have a red shoe altar call." Reggie flushed and stared at the ground. "The rest of you, keep up the work. Oh, I'd like to see more interaction with the crowd, particularly the kids; find ways to do that. Remember, it's the kids, not the tent poles, that prop the Big Top up."

Bimbam, Jordy, gestured at Antonio. "So, given what you said to Chesko, I am now officially part of the kid's show, I'm not just filling in—like when Reggie was sick?" Reggie flushed again and studied the tops of his sneakers.

Antonio glanced at Reggie but answered Bimbam. "Right, you are now part of the kid's show. Get with Chesko about that. Since there we have no shows today, now would be a good time to talk it over."

Antonio picked up his clipboard from the table, evidently about to close the meeting, when Cupcake, Saul, raised his hand. "Yeah, Cupcake, what is it?" As Cupcake asked his question about entrances and exits during the grand finale, Chuck noticed that Greasy was no longer staring at him, but staring at Reggie. The table seemed oddly tense. But then Antonio ended the meeting and the tenseness was gone. Cupcake went over and put a hand on Reggie's shoulder. Chuck overheard BonBon ask Greasy if he was feeling better. He said he was. Bimbam came around the table to Chuck to talk about the kid's show for a little while. They all stood around talking for a few minutes and then Clown Alley ended, the clowns all headed in their separate directions.

}o{

When Chuck got back to the trailer, Sarah was dressed and ready to go. When Chuck came in, she gave him a quick kiss. "Ok, Chuck, how are we going to do this?"

"Well, we take a taxi into town—to an address near the RI store. Then we get inside and get a look at whatever it is that Antonio is expecting. When I saw the sheet at the store yesterday, I saw that arrivals to the store typically come in at around 2 pm. Whatever it is should be there soon. I'm guessing whomever Antonio sends will not get their right away. We should have time." Chuck called for a taxi, explaining that they would be waiting for it outside the camp.

"I mentioned that I was taking you into Savannah for Valentine's Day lunch after Clown Alley broke up. So, that's our story. I need to get into the back room at the RI store, so I need you to be my distraction. Luckily, nature outfitted you for that role, if you don't mind me saying so." He stepped back and admired Sarah—her heels, her black jeans, her blue sweater. She smirked at him.

"Just remember, smile and seem very interested in what they have to say."

"Oh, you mean like that time I developed an asset in a Buy More," she asked, deadpanning. "Seeming interested in what that guy had to say was the greatest acting job of my spy career."

"Very funny," Chuck groused as he handed her bag and jacket to her, and then picked up his jacket. "And, no, please don't be that convincing, or we will never get you out of the store alone. The nerds'll follow you like lovesick puppies."

"Right," Sarah quipped, still deadpanning, "like that would be a new experience."

"You know, you were right at the _El Compadre_ when you said you weren't funny." Chuck tried to deadpan himself, but a grin leaked through.

"No, I wasn't right. That's another thing being with you has taught me."

"Really?" Chuck's grin grew pleased. "That's great."

"Yes, it's shown me what someone who _truly_ isn't funny is like." She shot him a look, and she stepped out of the trailer as she finished the comment. Chuck slapped his forehead and went after her.

}o{

Luck was with them. The man Chuck had interacted with at the RI store was not there. That was a complication eliminated. Chuck had walked by the front of the store a couple of times, stopping the second time as if he were considering one of the posters in the window. He had gotten a count on the employees: Three men.

Chuck stepped out of the view of the store windows where Sarah was waiting, her jacket hanging from her crossed arms. She was watching Chuck with…pride, he realized. When he reached her, she put out her hand and took his. "You know, you really are good at that. I can see why you got such high scores at the Farm."

Chuck was puzzled. "How do you know about my scores?"

"The night Ellie came over, when you visited Martin, just before this mission, I asked her about your time there and she mentioned it to me. I'd like to talk about the Farm with you sometime, Chuck. I still don't understand why you went, why you are a spy. I want to hear that story. Neither your mom nor Ellie seems confident she understands your decision."

Chuck's stomach tightened a little. "Yeah, we should talk about that, and we will. But, for now, three men inside. I need you to get all three to pay attention to you. I will slip into the back. It shouldn't take me more than a couple of minutes. I have my phone camera and," he pointed to his head, "I have noggin' cam."

Sarah nodded. She squeezed his hand and went into the store. Chuck looked at his watch, marking the time. Two minutes later he went in. As he fully expected, all three men were standing, staring in rapt fascination at Sarah, who was trying to explain the "computer thingy" that she wanted.

Chuck never got a glance from any of the men. He walked deliberately but unhurriedly past where they were standing and through the swinging, _Employees Only_ doors to the back room. Inside the storage area, he oriented quickly. He saw a shelf marked _In-Store Deliveries_. He moved to it quickly. There were several boxes and several bags. Chuck rummaged through the bags until he found the one marked for delivery to Antonio. He opened the bag. Inside was a plain cardboard box. It had no RI logo, no markings at all. Chuck pulled it from the bag.

The box was taped shut. _Shit_. Luckily, the tape was just typical packing tape. Chuck grabbed a box opener from a nearby counter and opened the box.

Inside was… _what_? A small metal device, flat and narrow, maybe two inches long. It was almost completely enclosed, although there were many tiny openings on one end, and a tight-fitting rubber cap on the other. Using his fingernail, Chuck pried the cap up and revealed a port, but of an unfamiliar kind—not, for example, a USB port. There was nothing else in the box. Chuck was sure this had to be the Ring tech Bryce described, but it was difficult to make anything of it. He put it on the counter and took photographs of it—both sides, both ends. He grabbed a ruler from a coffee cup filled with pencils and pens, and put the ruler alongside the device, to be sure of its length, and he took a picture of it with the ruler beside it. He studied the port for as long as he dared, then he replaced the rubber cap, forcing it down into place, put the device in the box after re-taping it, and the box back into the bag.

He had just replaced the bag and turned to leave when another employee came through the back door, evidently just showing up for a shift. She hadn't seen Chuck; he immediately ducked behind the counter. She came in and hung up her jacket. She walked to the swinging doors, and Chuck scooted soundlessly around to the other side of the counter. The woman looked through one of the windows of a swinging door. He heard her sigh in frustration. Chuck peeked over the countertop, watching her reach up and fluff her hair.

"Those nerds are mine." Her voice was steely. Evidently, she had seen Sarah and the Nerd Trinity. She pushed the doors open hard. Chuck rushed forward, stepping through the doors after her but before they swung shut. He slowed immediately and turned toward the wall of peripherals. The woman was evidently a manager, and when she joined the small group, the three guys glanced nervously from Sarah back to the woman, and back to Sarah again. Eventually, each sadly turned and went to find something to do other than talking to the beautiful blonde customer. The woman glared coldly at Sarah, not offering her any help, waiting for her to leave.

Chuck started toward the door, hoping Sarah followed him. He heard Sarah coo "Well, thank you, your staff is so attentive," and then he heard her behind him. He opened the door and, looking back at her, held it open. Acting like he didn't know her, he nodded his head: "Beauty before brains."

Sarah smirked at him and responded: "Pearls before swine."

The assistant manager overheard the exchange and her look at Sarah's back when from cold glare to grudging respect. Chuck slipped out.

When he caught up with Sarah, he looked over at her. "Hey, what was that?"

"Just a little Dorothy Parker. 'Beauty before brains'? You had that coming. Besides, I already told you: you aren't funny." She laughed softly.

Chuck shook his head, laughing himself, amazed and entranced by her as always. "I saw it, Sarah—the Ring tech. But, hell if I understand it or how it works. I got photos."

"Great. Textbook, Chuck, really." She gave him a quick beaming smile. "Let's get back to camp, look at those photos, and come up with a plan. I suppose we are still officially on the mission Graham gave us, but things have gone pear-shaped. What we reveal, and to whom we reveal it, has become a very sensitive business, life and death even."

"Well, Sarah, things are even more pear-shaped than you know. The name of the person who is going to pick up the package—it's not 'Reggie'. It starts with an 'M'. But it is 'Marvin', not 'Maria'. Greasy's going to make the pick-up. I suspect he's the 'M' in the notation on Antonio's list."

Sarah walked along in silence. "Greasy. I was right, Chuck. It's no phobia. I'm tracking reality. _Clowns_ are _goddamn creepy."_

}o{

Back at camp, in their trailer, Sarah was looking at the notation on Chuck's copy of Antonio's list. Chuck had a firm suspicion and told her on the way, since he could remember the list: the other letters in the notations holding the position of 'M' were all first letters of the real first names of Circus Maximus clowns.

They'd double-checked Chuck's memory against Sarah's photo, but Chuck's memory was correct. There was an 'S'—Saul, Cupcake. A 'G'—George, BonBon. And of course, 'M'—Marvin, Greasy. Lots of 'M's. There were no 'R's on the list at all. Whatever had gone on with Reggie, it looked like it was the first time he'd been involved.

"So, Clown Alley's been Antonio's legs." He sounded disappointed. "I guess it makes good sense. When the public is here, they're in make-up. When they make pick-ups or drops, they're out of makeup. Not likely to be casually identified. Folks who know both their faces, if I can put it that way, are all almost always in camp. Leaving like we did today isn't common. Circus folk are more comfortable with circus folks. I kinda get that now. Anyway, it's a good plan. Is there anything in the files on these guys that we missed, because we didn't suspect them?"

As Sarah looked for the files, Chuck closed his eyes and re-examined them at the same time. After a few minutes, they both said "Oh!" at the same time.

Sarah spoke first. There's nothing here. Saul has a record, but just a couple of shoplifting charges. But each of the three trained in Europe, at the same clown college. The _Ecole international Theatre Jacques Lecog_ —in Paris."

Chuck's eyes glazed over for a moment. "Say that again, please," he begged. Sarah did. Chuck grabbed her arm and started kissing it, first on her pulse point and then moving in small steps up her arm.

He stopped for a second at the inside of her elbow. "Morticia, you spoke French!"

"I have no idea what you are doing or what you are talking about," Sarah laughed, shaking her head, "but give me my arm back."

Chuck stiffened, looking off into the distance. He turned around and pointed to the sketch of the Ring tech he had made. "I didn't realize it at the time, but the way that thing is made—like it is meant to function underwater. What if the thing is an _implant_ , what if it goes into the body, like into the arm. Like, could that be why Lawton's arm mattered so much to someone? Bryce said the tech has sometimes had side effects, weirds the personality. Chris Parks said that Lawton's behavior was out of character."

"Ok. Good! We need to consider that. But one thing at a time, Chuck. Back to the clowns," Sarah shuddered. "So, our three clowns are all Americans but all went to clown school in Paris and they overlapped there, Greasy graduating first, the other two arriving as he finished. No evidence of any connection among them before Paris. They worked for various European circus, sometimes all at the same circus, sometimes at different circuses. They've been with Circus Maximus, and back in the States, for ten years. They all got hired by Antonio at the same time."

"Huh. And that would have been a year or so after Antonio's trapeze fall…"

Sarah looked at Chuck. "Do you think that is significant?"

"Yeah, I just have the feeling that Antonio blames, well, the world for his injury. Maybe that made him ripe for recruitment into the Ring."

Sarah narrowed her eyes. "Yes, I suppose. Those are questions it would be good to answer, how Antonio got recruited and why. It would be nice to know how Antonio found out about our three clowns. It would be nice to know what is going on at that clown college. Well, birds-in-hand right now. We need to figure out what happens to that tech when it gets here, so we need to be ready to intercept Greasy." Sarah scrunched up her face. "Now, there's a sentence that even as I spy I never thought I would say."

Chuck looked at this watch. "The slip said Greasy would pick the bag up between 5 and 6 pm. Are you still convinced he will come back here with the tech?"

"Yes, Antonio is running this show. I don't think the tech goes on from here except through his hands. Spy instincts." Sarah grinned at Chuck and shrugged. "The clowns are his faces, his legs, maybe his muscle, but he's the brains. The more we've talked this afternoon, the surer I am that the tech comes here and gets passed on from here. We need to find a way to track the tech until Antonio hands it over. I expect it will happen tomorrow, since I believe that the tech gets passed on when the public is here and the circus is full-go, and I doubt Antonio wants to hold onto the tech for longer than necessary."

"You know, Jan and Liz's trailer is near Antonio's on the end. Why don't we see if we can spend the evening with them? We could keep an eye on Antonio's place from there. I think we have a bottle of wine. That'll be our ticket in. Likely Antonio's arranged with a local pizza place to make deliveries, as usual. We can avoid the cookhouse tonight."

"Ok," Sarah agreed. "Those two should make the stakeout amusing."

Chuck grabbed a bottle of wine. "Yeah, but I think Liz is more dangerous than Antonio. She has a tongue as sharp as one of your knives, and she can use it almost as well. She scares me a little."

Sarah reached out and patted him on the shoulder. Mock-consolation. "Poor Chuck, surrounded by scary women: Liz, Ellie, Frost and me."

Chuck stood for a moment, pretending to pout. "You forgot Jan. Her clarinet is a deadly weapon. I may be the most emasculated man in history." He bowed his head in mock-defeat.

"Well, if you ever actually feel emasculated, just rewind the mewing sounds you made me make this morning—and I'm pretty sure you'll cope. If we hadn't been in this trailer, there's no telling what I would have sounded like." She winked, then reached up and caressed the back of his neck, as she had that morning.

Chuck smiled and stood straight. "Huh. Yeah, that works." He leaned down and kissed her quickly. "Alright, stakeout time, Circus Maximus style. Too bad I don't have a stakeout mix ready."

"Maybe Jan could play some Hall and Oates," Sarah offered. She looked at Chuck and, although they both smiled at the memory, they both shuddered at the prospect.

They were about to go when Chuck's phone rang. He looked at it then accepted the call. "Hey, Mom. Good. How about you? Good. Say, Sarah's here, can I put this on speaker? Ok." Chuck tapped the phone.

Frost's voice sounded more clipped than usual. "Chuck, Sarah—we need to talk…"

* * *

 **A/N2** Tune in next time: Frost on the phone, a stakeout with Jan and Liz, Ring tech, and clowns creep, creep, creeping around. All that and more in the next chapter, "Black and White Circus?".


	19. Chapter 19: Black and White Circus?

**A/N1** Back home.

For those of you who might be wondering where we are in the story, we are just a little past halfway—at least if all goes to plan. I rate Chapter 16 the 'formal' middle of the story (not necessarily its middle in terms of words or chapters).

I am much indebted to you all for comments. Thanks for reading and reviewing and for sending PMs. If you are enjoying the story, I'd love to get a review saying just that much.

Warning. One of the characters here will push the limits of polite conversation—well, she'll go crashing past them. Be prepared. I can't control her.

Don't own Chuck. No money made.

* * *

 **Turned Tables**

 _The Circus Days and Nights Mission_

* * *

Wednesday, February 14, 2008  
Outside Savannah, Georgia  
Circus Maximus Camp  
6:00 pm

* * *

CHAPTER 19 Black and White Circus?

* * *

Sarah was walking with Chuck toward Jan and Liz's trailer. She was holding Chuck's hand, and thinking about the game-changing phone call they had gotten from Frost. She knew he was too.

}o{

"Chuck, Sarah—we need to talk."

Sarah responded, since Chuck looked panicked. "Ok, Mary, we are listening."

"I put my best analyst on this. Someone I trust. The analyst dug around— _very_ creatively. Without going into all the work, here's what we…I now believe about Graham. I can't prove much of it, if any, but I believe it.

"Graham is compromised. I do not mean that he is exactly a member of the Ring. It's…well, it's complicated...

"Graham has a gambling problem. Did you suspect that, by any chance, Sarah?"

Sarah answered after a moment. "No, I had no idea. We had meets…a couple of times…at horse tracks or casinos, but I just thought the locations were chosen for the sake of the crowds, the confusion…But Graham and I have never been…chatty…" Sarah trailed off, unsure what to think or say, trying to remember anything in Graham's behavior that might have suggested it.

"Those places may have been chosen for that reason. His preferred form of gambling, at least recently, has been privately arranged card games with high rollers. We don't know how long it has been going on exactly, but a while.

"His off-ledger trips to Batumi were for gambling, for games set up by Luka Beridze. Unbeknownst to Graham, Beridze was setting up these games for the Ring, using them—at times, anyway—to gain leverage over players, over losing players.

"Graham was a loser, a big loser. Beridze was leaning on him, for the Ring's sake. The losses were large enough that Graham couldn't get all the money together immediately. He made more payments to Beridze, defraying the debt. We aren't sure where the money he paid Beridze came from. But that's the history of payments you found, Chuck.

"We think that Graham took Beridze to be operating on his own. He may have believed that up until after your mission to Batumi.

"Graham wanted Beridze dead. He believed that Beridze kept no books, so he thought his interactions with Beridze would be forgotten when Beridze took a bullet to the head.

"The termination order on Beridze Graham gave you was sanctioned by CIA analysts working along with Graham, and while Beridze was a dangerous scumbag, we suspect that Graham used analysts he could influence, and that he pressured them to concur on the termination.

"Graham wasn't happy about how the result in Batumi was achieved, but he also knew that what you knew about his payments to Beridze. Since you had no proof of what they were for, he likely could explain them away. It galled him that you—Chuck—were the one who found this out, that you had suspicions. Still, he thought he was effectively in the clear, his debt gone because the person he was indebted to was dead. So, in the end, you'd done him a favor, though he wanted his favor done his way. We think he wanted Beridze executed publicly because he was sending a message about what he was willing to do to folks who leaned on him hard.

"But the Ring was overseeing Beridze's show, off the books. The Ring reached out and began to pressure Graham again, demanding repayment or services and promising either to kill him or expose him if they did not get them. What they most wanted was information on CIA Ring-directed activities." Frost paused for a moment, letting them mull it over.

"We aren't sure Graham gave you up in Romney. We could find no proof either way. Our best bet, _bet_ , is that he didn't. There are unidentified Ring agents in the CIA, we're sure, and we think one of them did it. But Graham is under serious pressure. He can't be trusted.

"Obviously, we need to keep him thinking that you do not suspect anything, and are on his mission, under his control. But as of now, the two of you are working for me—I've cleared it with…people above Graham." Frost finally ended the recitation. Silence claimed Chuck and Sarah's trailer for a while.

"Wait a minute, Mom," Chuck said, waving his hands as if she were in the room and not just on speaker, "do you mean we are now working for the CIA _against the CIA_? Like we're cheating on the CIA with the CIA?"

"I guess you could put it that way, Chuck. But do this my way, and you are not rogue. Of course, if Graham figures out that you are not under _his_ control, he might label you 'rogue' and make things…difficult…for you; so, again, we need him not to suspect. Now, you can refuse this if you want—I have cleared it but I will not insist that you agree—but I am anticipating you will trust your…mother."

Chuck shot a desperate look at Sarah. She motioned for him to be calm. "Mary, we are happy to trust you. But we need you to know what we know, so you can advise us." She gestured to Chuck, to see if he objected; he nodded weakly for her to go ahead.

Sarah gave Frost a rundown of all that they had discovered, and what they learned from Bryce. She separated out what they had told Graham and what they had not told him. Frost listened in silence and the silence went on well after Sarah finished.

"So, the Ring believes there is a human…Intersect." Frost's voice was edgy. "And they are after this…person? Ok. Good to know…" Silence. Longer silence. "The Ring is hunting the Snark. Fool's errand. And so, you are chasing the Ring tech and you are going to try to figure out how…Antonio is passing it on, and to whom?"

"Yes. And, again, Graham knows about the tech. If he gives that information to the Ring, we are exposed here—badly exposed." Sarah's tone was grim.

Mary's answering tone matched Sarah's. "I will do my best to keep up with Graham. But there is almost no way to put him under constant surveillance. My analyst is good at predictions, though, and so maybe we can be where we need to be ahead of time, if that proves necessary. Graham will play this, hoping for something to use against the Ring, to fight back, and so until you provide him with that or he thinks you cannot, he is likely to stay in his lane.

"But that could change. People snap under pressure—and Graham, despite the heights he has reached, is not psychologically rubbery. He's brittle. Even if he has resisted the Ring so far, it's hard to know how long he will hold out. And remember, he's not resisting out of noble motives, he's resisting to save his own ass, one way or another."

"I need you two to see if it is possible to parlay what you've found into a strategy for getting to the Ring elders. Roark sounds like he might be one, given what Larkin said, but Roark is not someone we want to go at directly until we are sure. Antonio's tie to Beridze is intriguing, especially since it seems to be connected to gambling. Maybe you can find out more about that.

"But the tech is the priority. Follow the tech—and let me know what you find out. I will send someone to the clown school in Paris to have a look around; I have a friend in France, in the DGSE. I'll have her see what she can find."

"Do you need anything? Do you need backup? I can't command resources like Graham, but I can manage…some things."

"Not yet," Chuck replied, and Sarah nodded once. "Let's string this along for a day or two and see where we are. But we do need some a few items, replacements for the ones that Graham supplied to us—trackers, listening devices—throw in a directional mike. Oh, and I need some tranq darts…"

Chuck glanced at Sarah to see if she had anything she wanted to add.

"…We also need another tranq pistol," Sarah mentioned, "and we need a non-descript car. Park it in somewhere in the public parking near the circus early tomorrow. Put the things we need in the trunk. Leave the keys against the back of the driver's side tire. Text us the plate number. We need to be able to follow when the tech leaves the circus, if possible."

"Ok. It'll be done. I will keep working here. Check in with me as the situation changes. I will do the same. Goodbye."

Chuck ended the call and then gave Sarah a puzzled glance. "Another tranq pistol?"

"Yes, I want options."

"Ok."

}o{

Sarah stopped and pulled Chuck to her by their joined hands. She felt sick to her stomach, sort of oily inside. The news about Graham…

"Chuck," she started, her eyes soft, "do you think Graham was using me all along to settle personal scores. I mean—I at least thought the terminations were sanctioned. I always checked. Well, I mean I examined the order. I never dug into the stories. I just…I did what I was told to do, Chuck." Her voice shook.

"You know, Mom never said it, but if you think about it, the subtext of what she told us about Graham today was that Graham is cowardly. He had used or tried to use analysts and agents to get his own way, but it is also true that he didn't try to do that for someone upstanding. He did it, in the case we know, for Beridze. If you had shot Beridze, the guilt would be on Graham, not you, Sarah, or me as your partner. If he used you, he should answer for that, not you." He looked earnestly into her eyes.

"I know intellectually that you are right, Chuck, but even if the guilt properly belongs to Graham, it feels like he off-loaded it to me. I've been coming to understand that I was just a tool to him, a weapon. I confused him with my father. Whatever can be said about my dad, and although he used me as a tool in his cons—a little girl with big blue eyes and blonde hair, his useful little angel—I do know that in his own twisted way he really did, does, love me. But Graham never cared about me. Well, except as a gun collector might care for a favorite weapon.

"But when he recruited me, as he recruited me, the way he treated me at the Farm, I thought he was like my dad, but better—but he wasn't. He was worse. My dad sometimes conned me, but when he did he was at least conning himself too. Graham…"

Chuck took her in his arms. "It's ok, Sarah. Before this is over, we'll make sure Graham gets what is coming to him." He stepped back. "But for right now, let's focus on this mission, on the Ring tech, and let's be cheerful around Jan and Liz."

Sarah smiled, weak at first, but strengthening: "Luckily, that's not hard to do. Being cheerful around Jan and Liz, that is."

"No, it's not." He looked at her face then shifted to her hair.

"What is it, Chuck?"

"You know, as much as I like Sabre, and her outfit and such, I miss your hair, your blonde hair." He reached out and brushed a strand of black hair that had fallen across her face. It fell back.

Sarah grabbed the strand of her hair and looked at it. "Yes, I'm tired of being a brunette. I'm getting jealous of myself."

}o{

As expected, Jan and Liz were delighted to have company.

They had a surprisingly large trailer. Inside, it was spare but comfortable. On one wall was a poster for the University of Missouri gymnastics team. Jan and Liz met on when they both got recruited to do gymnastics at Missouri.

Each of them had hopes when young of making the Olympic team, but growth on Jan's part, and injuries on Liz's, kept those hopes from being realized. But both were still talented, and they tumbled their way through college. Afterward, neither wanted to give up the life they had known since they were little, and they had decided to become performers. They'd worked their way up to Circus Maximus over a couple of years.

Chuck ordered pizza. Jan and Liz turned out to be olive fans, but Sarah was not, so they had the olives that would have been on the whole pizza piled on one half of the veggie pie.

Jan poured wine and as she did, Liz peered intently at Sarah. "Say, Sarah, isn't that necklace new?"

Sarah colored slightly and reached up to touch the ruby heart. She smiled at Liz. "Chuck gave it to me this morning."

"I'm sure he did. Repeatedly. But is the necklace new?" Liz's eyes danced.

Sarah's color rose and Chuck became very interested in his pizza slice. "The necklace is new." Sarah's pleased smile shown through her momentary embarrassment.

"Well, it's gorgeous. Nice choice, Chesko." Liz caught Chuck's eyes and shot him in 'Ok' sign. He nodded in acknowledgment. He turned to Sarah and when his eyes met hers, neither could look away. _God, I love this woman._ Finally, Jan made throat-clearing noises and Chuck managed to look away from Sarah.

"One more look like that, you two," Jan teased, "and we'll have to move the pizza, turn our backs, and give you two the table, I think."

"Well, you can turn your back, Jan," Liz chimed, "but I plan to watch. Dinner and a show." She ducked as Jan threw a crumpled napkin at her head.

Chuck was seated on one side of the table beside Sarah. Jan and Liz were on the other. From where they sat, Chuck could see Antonio's trailer—through the large window, the curtains open, behind Jan and Liz. As he watched the napkin soar past Liz's curly head, Chuck saw Greasy, in street clothes, standing in front of Antonio's trailer. Sarah's foot made soft contact with his; she saw Greasy too.

He was holding the box Chuck had investigated at the RI store. The RI bag had been discarded, evidently. Greasy stood in place and looked around. He frowned at something, someone. Chuck was surprised to see Rastelli approach Greasy. The two men talked for a moment, angrily at first, but then more calmly.

After a moment more of conversation, Rastelli started to step past Greasy, heading into the trailer, but Greasy put his hand out and stopped Rastelli. The movement turned Greasy's back to Chuck and he stood between Chuck and Rastelli. Greasy reached into his pocket and handed Rastelli something. Rastelli took it, looked down at it, and frowned. He put it in his pocket and walked away. Greasy stared at his back for a while, then turned and went into Antonio's trailer, still carrying the box.

Chuck snuck a glance at Sarah. She had seen the interaction too. Liz noticed them and, after looking at them curiously, she turned and glanced at Antonio's trailer, turned back and looked at them again. Sarah leaned over and gave Chuck a quick kiss. Liz grinned at that; her curiosity seemed to pass.

"So, Chuck," Liz asked, her tone simultaneously good-natured and lascivious (the perfect Liz tone), "did Sabre here give you anything for Valentine's Day, other than her limber, curvaceous self?"

Chuck closed one eye in exaggerated shock. Nodding his head, Chuck answered her, "Sarah gave me a perfect gift. Um, uh…another gift. I hope she knows," he turned toward Sarah, his chest tightening, "how much it meant to me. But that's all I am going to say about that; no offense, guys, but it is between us." Sarah took Chuck's hand and rubbed her thumb across the back of it.

"Oh, no offense, Chuck. Nice to know that gallantry still exists, given its many small but implacable foes." Jan glared at Liz. Liz stuck out her tongue at Jan.

"'Gallantry' is an outdated, patriarchal concept," Liz intoned, but her face, her impish grin, belied her formal tone, "and I refuse to take it seriously."

"You refuse to take any concept other than bedroom concepts seriously—and you have a gift for turning almost every concept into a bedroom concept. And, by the way, 'gallant' can mean 'displaying courage'. It needn't mean 'courteous behavior by a man toward a woman'. Withstanding Hurricane Liz is a display of courage." Jan ended with an emphatic glare.

Liz swept her gaze across all three, beaming in response to Jan's comment. "I love it when she gets _lexicographic_. Her definitions are always so explicit. She slips the _definiens_ so smoothly into the _definiendum_."

Jan threw her hands in the air and looked toward the heavens. "Lord, spare me from this X-rated Oompa Loompa…"

"Jan!" Liz barked, "don't talk about Oompa Loompas—you'll make poor Sarah start dreaming of Chuck's Willy Wonka and Everlasting Gobstoppers, and Chuck start dreaming of Sarah's Lickable Snozzberry Wallpaper..."

Jan dropped her head in defeat as she got up and trudged to the small fridge. "Anyone for ice cream?"

Sarah's brow furrowed. "Wait a minute—wasn't that wallpaper for _nurseries_?"

"Huh?" Chuck offered, his head whirling from Jan to Sarah.

"What?" Sarah asked him. "I wasn't _hatched_."

"A nursery?" Chuck was lost.

"What flavor?" Liz asked, smirking victoriously for a beat and then, all at once, a picture of perfect innocence.

}o{

Full of ice cream and innuendo, Sarah led Chuck out of Jan and Liz's trailer. They walked a short distance away, then circled back silently. They carefully and rapidly approached Antonio's trailer. Greasy had not left. Sarah got to the end of the trailer, Chuck standing beside her. They took a moment to get control of their breathing, then they moved in a crouch to a window. It was partially open.

"I don't know…" Greasy was saying, "…I grant he's a good clown. I just don't like him. He's a goody-goody two shoes. The kids love him. That's a bad sign. We can make do with the men we have. Frankly, if we were going to recruit one of them, I'd recruit the woman. There's a coldness in her. I wouldn't want to be on her bad side. She could be one of us."

Sarah's heart lurched. But then she felt Chuck's hand, warm and gentle, on her shoulder. Not a word, an act of refutation. Greasy was wrong about her. She could not be one of them. There had been a coldness in her—but it was never _her_. She had kept her heart; Chuck was right. And he had heart-warmed her.

"Well," Antonio replied, "I want another clown. Juvi isn't going to do it. Let me decide about approaching Chesko. Kid's got that wife to take care of. I'm not sure how long she'll be willing to spend her life in that trailer. She's high-end, whatever you think of her. He's the reacher; she's the settler. Not sure how long he'll be able to keep her settled. My guess is she'll start to wander."

Sarah turned to Chuck and kissed him silently but deeply. She hoped he could taste the promise on her lips. She was home. With him. She wasn't going anywhere.

Antonio was quiet for a minute. "I want the kid in the grand finale warm-up in case we can recruit him. If we can, then we can get him to develop a gag with an audience member. He could make the drop then, and no one would be the wiser. Easier than me having to cross paths with the person after the trapeze act and handing it off. A couple of times we've almost missed making the drop in the confusion of the crowd.

"Anyway, that's down the road, if I decide to do it. Tomorrow, we'll do the standard drop. I'll do it when my family finishes. Luckily, we don't have to do this again until we get farther west. Makes me nervous having that thing in camp for too long. They don't take losing one of these well—not at all. We need to make sure the drop gets done tomorrow. Is Reggie going to be a problem?"

"No," Greasy said, irritation in his voice, "he'll do what's expected. I'll keep an eye on him."

"Ok. We need to decide what to do with Reggie. Let's take care of the drop tomorrow, and then we'll take care of Juvi."

"'Let me know. Night, boss." Greasy finished, his voice alive with menace toward Juvi. They heard the door close behind him.

}o{

Sarah motioned Chuck away from the trailer. They moved away quickly. After moving past several trailers, they slowed and straightened up, walking back between two trailers into the center path. No one seemed to be around. They got back to their trailer and inside. Sarah sighed in relief. Chuck plopped down on the bed. His shoulders slumped.

Sarah knelt in front of him. "Chuck, don't take seriously the relationship analysis of an embittered aerialist and a murderous clown?"

"Huh?" Chuck said, lifting his chin, his eyes cloudy. "Oh, no, no, Sarah. Dumbo and Gonzo are not going to make me question us. We're good—after this morning, how could I doubt…" he smiled at her, an intimate smile, and she felt it as if the smile were hers—and then she realized an answering smile was on her lips. She kissed him.

"Right, Chuck. This morning's celebration was…This morning was…" She couldn't find the words she wanted; she could think of nothing that would capture her satisfaction and her exhilaration. At last, she gave up and leaned in. Her lips to his ear, she groaned, low and deep and long. She pulled back. Chuck's eyes had gone glassy. "Do you understand?"

Chuck trembled visibly. "I get it. And you can tell me that anytime you want." He gave her a look that made her tremble. She forced herself to stand up.

"We need to think about tonight. About Frost's call today. And once we have, I want to forget about it all for a while. As an aid to forgetfulness," Sarah glanced at him from under her eyelashes, "I will tell you again what I just told you. But first, let's think about all this."

They started with Graham. Chuck told Sarah about the change in Graham between the Batumi debrief and the Romney debrief—his increase in anxiety. Chuck hadn't thought about it until just after his mom's calls. But it fit with her idea that Graham had fallen under Ring pressure after the death of Beridze.

"What do you think, Sarah. About Graham? About what Mom believes?"

Sarah sat down on the bed beside Chuck. "I don't know. I would never have thought it on my own. Graham always seemed so focused on the CIA, on his career. I never imagined him outside the office, except on CIA business. But now that I've had some time to assimilate it, I don't find it hard to believe. He has no family. All he has had has been that office. There's no further for him to go.

"He has the wrong personality and too much intelligence baggage to move into politics. He has the wrong personality to find a companion, and he's too self-involved to share his life with anyone, even if he weren't in the habit of keeping secrets. But he's at that point in a man's life when a life dedicated to a career—and with nothing else in it—can start to seem empty, meaningless. Maybe he started to gamble to keep from gazing into the abyss. I don't know."

"A gambling habit as a coping strategy for a midlife crisis?" Chuck pursed his lips, reflecting on it. "Men have certainly done stupider things. Thrown away their lives when they realized they were closer to the back than the front door. I've never liked the man. He always struck me as a manipulator, a gameplayer—so in one way I guess it doesn't surprise me that he'd be drawn to gambling.

"He rolled the dice with you over and over. Sending you on suicide missions but betting on you to survive." Chuck shrugged. "All I will say is that if Mom trusts her analyst, I do too. We know something has been going on with Graham. The cause of it, the depth of it, maybe we don't know for sure about that. But we knew before we started this mission—before we ended the last one—not to trust Graham. And we are, sorta kinda, still on Graham's mission. The main thing is keeping him from figuring out that we are suspicious of him, beyond whatever suspicions he might think we have because of what I found on Beridze's computer.

"We need to figure out who Antonio is making the drop to tomorrow night. And that conversation we overheard has given me an idea. Antonio seems to want me to work for him, you know, in the Ring-like way. He seems to think I will be willing because you will get restless amid all this…" he threw his arms wide, embracing the trailer and the circus, their whole current cover life, "…splendor. So, I will go to him asking for money—an advance—and I will make it clear it is because of insecurities about you. If I feed his ego, make him think he was right about me, about us, in the right way, he will recruit me. I'll wait until we see what happens tomorrow night, but that seems to be the obvious play. What do you think, Sarah?" Chuck turned to her, eager for her opinion.

"As much as I wish it wasn't, it is the obvious play. So, I guess tomorrow we get back to Sabre and Chesko. After our final act, we will need to get changed and get back under the Big Top. I will stay close to Antonio. You should stay near the performer's exit. That'll put you equidistant from the main public exits, so you can get to either to pick up the person Antonio meets if I get delayed, or to join up with me if I can make it through the crowd."

Chuck nodded. He stood up. "Ok. That's a plan. So, one more thing. Working for Mom?"

"She's a good spy, Chuck, and I know she loves you. Frankly, working for her makes me feel somewhat less exposed. She is a match for Graham, maybe more than a match for him. At least we have someone with pull in our corner. We know she's tied to the oversight committee, the Senate Special Committee. That's some real pull."

"Good. I just know that sometimes Mom's not, um, easy," Chuck's eyebrows went up, "and that she's been hard on you a couple of times…"

"Yes, but I understood, and even if I thought she was wrong about some of what she said, I didn't for a minute think she is wrong to love you." Sarah stood and stepped toward him and put her hands around his waist, pulling herself tightly to him. "No one would be wrong to love you, Chuck. And now," she said, making sure her look was unmistakable, "it's time to forget the spy life for a while." She leaned close and made that sound again near his ear. She felt it register below his waist. "Make me forget, Chuck." He slipped his hands down her back and down, down onto her hips, and she felt her mind begin to empty as her heart overflowed and she filled with desire.

}o{

Chuck was asleep. Sarah had been too for a long time. She woke needing a drink of water. Their exertions before sleep had been…taxing. She got a glass of water and leaned against the counter, drinking it slowly.

When she finished, she climbed back into bed, careful not to wake Chuck. She put her head on the pillow and relaxed. She felt warm and loose-limbed and content. She reached out and rested her hand on Chuck's chest, feeling both his steady breathing and the measured thumping of his heart.

The fragility of it all, and the strength of their love for each other, settled on her together. A person could be vulnerable without being happy—but a person could not be happy without being vulnerable. Chuck was a gift. Serious Liz was right about that. It had taken Sarah time to process what Liz had said, but now she knew it to be true. She was thankful for him, profoundly grateful. Her hand rose and fell with his chest, and she felt her breathing slowly fall into rhythm with Chuck's.

Her eyelids were heavy, drooping. She shifted her head, and for a split second, she saw the silhouette of a clown on the closed shutters over their windows. Or she thought she did. She blinked and it was gone. Her breathing had sped back up. She slipped her hand under her pillow and wrapped it around the hilt of her knife. She was on alert for several minutes. Nothing happened. Nothing stirred. She, at last, let go of the knife and put her hand back on Chuck's chest, sure of one thing: other than Chesko, clowns were all hellspawn.

}o{

Sarah woke from a nightmare.

 _Chesko, his smile painted on upside-down, was chasing her through the trailers and tents of Circus Maximus. And then he wasn't chasing just her. He was chasing her and Chuck both. They were running, their hands clasped, toward the Big Top. The Calliope was wheezing and burping and whistling_ , _like someone had poured moonshine in the pipes. Chesko was gaining on them. They ran into the tent, but inside it was spelunker black. She could feel Chuck's hand still, but not see him. Then his LED heart came on. It was stuck to his shirt. Hers came on at the same time, stuck to hers. And then, in the thin red light, she saw that they were surrounded by clowns. And the clowns could see them, could see them because of their glowing hearts. Frowning Chesko began to advance, in each of his hands one of Sabre's knives…._

…Sunlight. On the blinds. Blink. Blink, blink. Blink.

No clowns, just Chuck—warm and solid and right beside her in the bed. She sighed in relief. Chuck rolled toward her, his eyes opening.

"Hey," he whispered, his voice raspy, "you alright?"

She rolled toward him and kissed him. "I am. Just a bad dream—of the ordinary kind, I guess, except for clowns."

Concern gathered on Chuck's face. "A _clown_ dream? Sorry, Sarah" He put out his arms and she moved into his embrace, feeling the last foggy vestiges of the dream evaporate. She basked in the feeling of being against him, the feeling of home and safety and completeness. "Do you want to tell me the dream?" Chuck asked, still in a whisper.

She shook her head. "Maybe later." She pushed him onto his back and she pillowed her head on his chest. Chuck stroked her hair.

After a few quiet moments, Chuck asked, "Sarah, what do you make of Rastelli showing up at Antonio's, talking to Greasy? I've never seen Rastelli angry, but he was. And Greasy gave him something. I don't know what."

"I don't either. I couldn't see it. I don't know. He seems such a sweet man. Everyone likes him, as far as I can tell. It's not hard for me to imagine that Greasy could annoy even Rastelli, so maybe it was about something completely unrelated to the Ring tech?"

"I hope so. I like that guy. I can't believe he'd be up to something underhanded."

"Still, Chuck, watch yourself around him. Circus Maximus is turning out to be harder to separate into good guys and bad guys than I had hoped. Say, did you notice that Liz was interested in Antonio's—or in our being interested in Antonio's—at least once last night?" Chuck nodded his head and Sarah continued, "I would never have thought anything of it except that when I got back from my visit to Bryce, she was napping in our bed. I didn't tell you; we had other things to…" her eyebrows danced, "…talk about. But that was _odd_ , even for never-met-a-boundary-I-didn't-leap-over Liz." Sarah paused.

"Yeah, I agree..." Chuck looked perplexed. "And I could swear I locked the trailer when I left it. Still…Liz? Really? I mean, yes, she can pervert even the Oompa Loompas, but…" Chuck trailed off and his eyes went out of focus for a second, then back into focus, changing topics, "Say, what was that about Lickable Wallpaper for _Nurseries_?"

Sarah dropped her chin onto Chuck's chest. She had had her head up, holding his brown eyes with her blue ones as they talked. "I just remembered the movie. One of the few things Dad would do for me, when we were on the move, conning, was check the local listings to see if that movie was on TV. I loved it when I was little…"

Chuck went quiet, after a gentle laugh, and he stroked her hair again. "Sarah, do you…um…have you ever thought about…kids?"

Sarah squeezed him, her head still on his chest. "Yes, Chuck, I have. Before Burbank, I started to think about a different life, about kids, then I met you, and…well, yes, I have. What about you, Chuck?"

"I've always wanted a family, Sarah. Falling in love with you has…" she felt him pause, his desire to continue and his slight reticence, his fear of spooking her, "…made that even clearer to me." She squeezed him again in response.

A warm silence suffused the trailer. Sarah thought about Chesko—smiling Chesko—with the kids. She would be able to see that again today. The prospect warmed her completely.

"Chuck, let's talk about Budapest…"

* * *

 **A/N2** I lifted this chapter title ( _sans_ interrogation mark) from the words of a song on Chris Hickey's forthcoming album _Lost Dogs in the Courtyard_. You can find it online—or can soon.

Tune in next time for shenanigans during and after the Grand Finale trapeze act. More clowns, more Ring tech, more confusion, more clowns. All in Chapter 20 "Jugglery"! See you soon!


	20. Chapter 20: Jugglery

**A/N1** Here we go. The game is afoot. And so on.

Thanks for reading and reviewing.

Don't own Chuck.

* * *

 **Turned Tables**

 _The Circus Days and Nights Mission_

* * *

Thursday, February 15, 2008  
Outside Savannah, Georgia  
Circus Maximus Camp  
8:25 am

* * *

CHAPTER 20 Jugglery

* * *

"…The last mission I had before Burbank was," Sarah slowed, feeling the tension in her body increase, "…different. Graham gave me a handler, an agent named Ryker…" Chuck nodded, indicating that he knew this from the file. "I had not had a handler…not even on my earliest assignments. Graham threw me into the deep end with no help. Sink—or swim. Be killed—or kill." Sarah could feel it becoming harder for her to speak. This was something she had planned never to talk about, ever, to anyone.

But this wasn't anyone; it was Chuck. Her Chuck. He trusted her. She trusted him; now she had to put that trust into action.

"Graham explained that he gave me a handler because Ryker had been working on the mission for a while, and that I was to play only a very specific, very limited role.

"I suppose all that was true, but this was after Bryce had gone off the reservation. Graham was already a little uncertain of me. I don't know what role that uncertainty played in him assigning me to Ryker, if any… " Sarah paused, looking down at Chuck's face while narrowing her eyes in thought.

"I still don't understand Graham's relationship to Ryker or how Ryker could get Graham to assign me to him—or why Graham wanted to assign me to Ryker, if it worked that way instead—but it became clear when I got to Budapest that I was Ryker's hired gun—for that mission, _Ryker's Enforcer_."

"Long story short, the mission involved a 'package' I was supposed to retrieve from a mansion in the city. According to Ryker, the family who lived there had been killed by organized crime, and the 'package' was secreted in the mansion. Ryker never explained what the 'package' was. All I knew was that it was something I could carry out of the place. Ryker had intel about where the 'package' was, and we went over the blueprints of the mansion until I knew it perfectly. I can still remember it." She pictured the layout of the mansion in her mind, then remembered it splashed with blood, littered with corpses. She shook her head, forcing the memory away.

"Anyway, he was going to run the mission from the van. I was to go in and bring the 'package' out." Sarah's voice began to thicken and she dropped her eyes, so that she was no longer looking at Chuck's face. "I should have known something strange was going on…I did know something strange was going on. I just couldn't get my hands around it, figure it out. Ryker seemed desperate for the 'package'.

"I guess understand why…well, why I would be the one Ryker and Graham would believe could make it in and out of the mansion alone—but it was a…mission impossible."

Sarah was quiet for a long time and Chuck didn't speak, didn't move. He waited.

"I felt so lost by then, Chuck…Everything with Bryce had gone to hell…Being the best at what I was best at…It no longer hid the reality of what I was best at from me. I was disillusioned with the spy life, with Graham, with myself. Graham's lies about the Greater Good, my lies to myself about all what I was doing—they'd grown sheer: I could see through them and see..." she shut her eyes and swallowed, "… _nothing_. I went along with it because I had no sense of any…live…alternative. All I could see ahead of me was a string of successful missions until the final unsuccessful one. Then, no more missions. Then…nothing."

"So, I went into the mansion, body-armored and weaponed. I would either live or die. It was that simple. If I lived, it would be to face another mission where I would live or die…By then, my mission parameters had been stripped to bare bone.

"It was a bloodbath going in, and a bloodbath coming out. I don't know if I would have made it out with any other 'package'. But the 'package' turned out to be…a baby girl.

"I was shocked, unhinged for a moment. But when I picked her up, the shock vanished, she became my hinge, and all that remained was an instantaneous conviction that the baby would get out of there, that she would live, even if I didn't. I got her out.

"I don't want to re-live the red swath of destruction I cut through the mansion. I was possessed. _I would not fail_.

"I got her out. I fled to a small hotel on the outskirts of the city. I was not going to give that beautiful little girl to Ryker." Sarah's face became fierce. "No way in hell."

"But I had no idea how to care for a baby. I ended up…calling my mom."

Chuck had remained still, completely caught up in the story as Sarah haltingly told it. But, stretched on his chest as Sarah was, he had a reaction Sarah could feel to the mention of the baby, and then to the mention of her mom: she felt his breathing sped up. However, he still did not speak. He continued to wait.

}o{

Chuck could feel Sarah's heart sledgehammering against his chest. He knew how extravagant the cost of this long story was for her. He wasn't sure he had ever heard her say this many words at once—not to him, not to anyone. He would not interrupt. He would not hurry her. He would wait. Something momentous was happening—both _in Sarah's story_ and _in Sarah_ as she told the story, even with all the fits and starts and detours.

"My relationship with my mom is complicated—as much by my dad and his role in her life and in mine, as by anything else—and we had been in contact with each other…rarely. But I had no one else to help me and I guess it was natural I would turn to her. I couldn't explain what was going on. But she just accepted what I said, and she helped me. She talked to me about feeding the baby, about bathing and changing her." Sarah paused for a moment, then smiled to herself. "She reminded me of a lullaby she used to sing to me. She sang a little of it and then I remembered…" Sarah hummed a snatch of the tune but Chuck did not have time to identify it.

"I was as afraid as I have ever been. More afraid than when I went into the mansion. That little girl terrified me. The prospect of keeping her ok and of saving her, terrified me. But I managed to do it. I got her to eat. I got her to sleep." Another pause. "I held her." Pause. "A lot." During another pause, Sarah's self-directed smile grew and Chuck felt himself liquify, just watching it, watching her. "Something inside me—deep inside me—that I never even imagined was there, it stirred. I knew for the first time why a woman might…" she stalled, waiting for the right word, "…want…to be a mother. I didn't..." Her smile vanished slowly, replaced by a self-directed frown, "I didn't consider becoming that little girl's mom. But mothers no longer seemed…foolish to me. I realized that there were things I could have in my life, maybe, that were not missions or parts of missions. _Nothing_ got replaced by _something_ …I started to feel vaguely as if my life was…mine, that I could make… _something_ of it." She fell quiet.

Chuck put out his hand and grazed it against her cheek. Her frown had gone. She smiled wistfully, but she smiled.

}o{

Sarah stopped talking. She started thinking.

Her childhood had been so unhappy that it had foreclosed on any thought of children when she got older. And then there was the added impossibility of having children while being a spy. She had never been around children much. The spy life was not densely populated with children.

The other women on the CAT Squad, Carina especially, had no use for children or families, and nothing but icy contempt for them. During Sarah's time with the squad, they all had subtly pressured each other to become more and more like Carina. That had been easy enough, apparently, for Zondra and Amy, but Sarah found that she had a hard time matching Carina's contempt. She could say the sorts of things that kept Carina at bay about it, but she knew that Carina suspected that Sarah's contempt for these things was not whole-hearted. Sometimes Sarah herself wished it was, but it wasn't. Carina's suspicion was correct.

Carina's constant competition with Sarah, her constant pushing of Sarah and her constant attempts to dictate Sarah's choices—these resulted from Carina's fear that the one spy Carina regarded as her equal might eventually make radically different choices for her life. And Carina was not ready to face the existential angst that would create in her. She wanted, she needed, Sarah to make the same choices she made or similar ones, or she would find her own choices suspect. Carina knew—until recently, Sarah had to admit, better than Sarah herself did—that Sarah could imagine a different life, a life other than the spy life.

Sarah shifted on Chuck's chest, about to go on with her story, and she wondered just how panicked Carina would be if she knew what Sarah was currently doing, currently thinking, currently talking about—talking about children with the man she hoped to marry. Sarah was not just imagining a different life; she was working to make it real. Telling this story was part of that work.

"I managed to get the baby out of the country and all the way back to the States. That's a long, harrowing story for another day. I couldn't give her to Ryker. I couldn't give her to the CIA. So, I gave her to my mom. I helped her to create the paperwork she needed to keep the baby. I finally told my mom—in general terms—what my job was. My mom is now raising the little girl, Molly, as her daughter. As my sister. But I have had no contact with them. Zero. Even Graham does not know the circumstances of my birth or my real name. He had no way of getting to Mom or Molly. Ryker has no way. As far as I know, Mom and Molly are safe.

"Doing that meant that I dropped off the CIA grid for a while. Ryker tried desperately to find me…"

Chuck spoke finally. "Yeah, I saw in your file that Ryker made inquiries several times, but Graham ignored them."

"Huh. Like I said, I wish I knew what the connection between Ryker and Graham was or is. Why would he assign me to Ryker but then refuse to help Ryker find me?" She considered the question and knew Chuck was considering it too. Neither had an answer. "When I showed back up at Langley, Graham demanded to know where I had been, what had happened to Ryker's 'package'. I told him I had a personal matter to attend to and that I had no idea about Ryker's 'package'. I had been lucky just to get out of the mansion alive; Ryker had sent me into a death trap.

"Graham was furious. He raged. But I wouldn't budge. I'm sure that's when he really started to worry that I was…disloyal. I'd never done anything like that before—vanished and refused to account for where I had been. Graham eyed me strangely after that, until he sent me to Burbank. To you." A light of realization shined on Sarah's face, then.

"Burbank started in Budapest." She leaned forward and kissed Chuck once, twice. "It started there in a lot of ways. All this started in Budapest."

Chuck's eyes were alight, and his smile bright. "So," he said, his voice warm, festive. "Among other things, are you telling me that _Sarah Freakin' Walker_ is not averse to someday being _Sarah_ Mother _Freakin' Walker_?"

Sarah groaned and pinched Chuck's side. He yelped. "Liz is a bad influence on you, Chuck." But she knew her eyes answered him: _yes_.

After a moment, she rolled off him and stood up, gathering her black hair with her hands, pushing it high on her head, and standing beside him in one of his t-shirts. "The problem for me is going to be finding a man fit to be the father…" She loosed her hair. Then she tapped her lips slowly with the index finger of her right hand, holding her right elbow in her left hand and looking toward the ceiling, as if she were trying to make a difficult decision.

Chuck sat up in the bed and reached for her. "Well, if it's alright with you, Ms. Walker, I'd like to submit an application."

She smirked at him as she lifted off the t-shirt and tossed it aside, and then hid it with the blankets she pulled off Chuck. "I always enjoy your _submissions_ , Mr. Bartowski." She climbed on top of him.

}o{

Sarah occupied her usual hidden vantage point, and she was watching Chuck perform for a group of school kids.

She was laughing softly to herself at his antics when she heard a voice behind her. She glanced over her shoulder. Rastelli stood behind her to her right and Greasy stood to his right. They were both watching Chuck. Rastelli had spoken. "Chesko's a good clown, Greasy. He sees his clowning in their eyes, not his own. Pure reception, no imposition. Magic. If only he could juggle."

"Actually," Sarah said quietly, "he can juggle. Not as well as you, Rastelli, but if you taught him…"

Rastelli beamed at the thought of having a student, but Greasy's frown deepened considerably. "I don't know what all the fuss is about. He can make kids laugh. True. But he is raw, untutored. There's no theory in his clowning."

Rastelli shook his large shaggy head. "Your clowning is too much theory, Greasy. You create perplexity, not joy, wasting all your gifts and all your schooling."

Sarah could tell this was an old argument between the two, and that there were hard feelings between them before the conversation started.

"I take it you two have different understandings of what a clown is supposed to be doing?" Sarah tried to keep her voice interested but not too eager. She wanted to draw them out, to see if she could figure out what might have gone on between them outside Antonio's trailer. Greasy looked her up and down, and Sarah was very glad she was not yet in her Sabre costume. She'd had to endure Greasy's…greasy…stare any number of nights. It was unbearable even when he was not in makeup. _But when he was_ —when he was she found that there was really nothing that made her flesh crawl like a leering, lascivious clown. But she made herself endure his gaze now—despite her desire to punch him in the throat—in hopes of getting him to drop his guard.

"Yes, you see, I am classically trained, at the great clown school of Paris. I studied with Jacques Le Coq himself. He taught that the clown is but a human being fully aware of the meaninglessness of life, yet who continues to strive and to fail despite that awareness."

Rastelli rolled his eyes dramatically, so dramatically his large head rolled with them. "Nonsense. The clown understands that life is meaningful and that failures do not deprive it of meaning, but reveal its meaning even better than successes. And I learned this not from an effete French intellectual who could not tell the difference between prattle and a pratfall, but by simply living my own life and performing my own gags attentively. I am a self-made clown. As Chuck is too."

Greasy sneered at Rastelli and looked to see if he could gauge which side of the debate Sarah favored. She made it clear with her posture that she was listening, but turned to watch Chesko again. She had little interest in the debate, but she certainly was on Rastelli's side. She really wanted to know what side of her _mission_ Rastelli was on.

Greasy's followed his sneer with a snorty laugh. It made Sarah turn back around.

"Always," Greasy lectured, "the uncultivated believe they are closer to life itself, to what is real. But nothing is real. There is only illusion."

Rastelli shook his head at Sarah and shrugged, sighing. She turned back to see the end of Chesko's interaction with the kids. She heard Greasy walking away. Rastelli stepped beside her.

"I have no idea why a man so embittered would choose to be a clown. An unhappy man can be an effective clown. But an embittered one—he may be technically perfect but he is no clown. He is never a clown. He is a _supposed_ clown who begrudges an actual clown a few dollars to take to town." With that, Rastelli stomped off. Sarah watched him leave and then turned back to look at Chuck.

Chuck was looking right at her. She had been discovered. She was disappointed—and not. She'd enjoyed the challenge of seeing him without him knowing, and she had worried that if he knew she was watching, he might have become self-conscious. But now she could tell him directly how much she loved these shows and his interaction with the kids—instead of reporting it as something she had heard from others (although that was no lie, others _had_ told her about Chuck and the kids). She waved at him and he waved back. Several little kids who had crowded around him shot her looks of displeasure. He belonged to them. Their faces made that clear. She nodded toward them and Chuck gave her a shrug. They were pleading for another gag.

Sarah winked at Chuck and headed away. The car and supplies Frost promised them should be in the public parking area. Sarah wanted to get the keys and grab the supplies. As she walked in that direction, she laughed silently to herself.

She was working for Frost and ultimately against Graham. _Spy vs. Spy_. She was with her boyfriend, who was also her spy partner, who was also her clown co-star in her knife-throwing circus act. _Spy vs. Spy_. She was finding out things about herself and about what she really wanted, things that had her on a spy mission to find an exit from the spy life. _Spy vs. Spy_. She was a spy in love. _Spy vs. Spy_. But, in middle of all that, and for the first time she could remember, she no longer felt self-divided, split, compartmentalized. There were still things that she needed to face, and things she needed to tell Chuck. Nonetheless, she felt like she was becoming whole. _Not_ Spy vs. Spy.

Just Sarah.

}o{

As Chuck made his way back to the trailer, he thought about his conversation with Sarah that morning. She had told him she wanted kids someday—and with him. Well, as usual with Sarah, she hadn't exactly said those words, but she had made herself clear to him.

How had they gotten from the Buy More Nerd Herd desk to here? He had dreamed of them together—really together—for so long. He looked down at the cover wedding ring on his finger. Damn spy life. That was the problem with the spy life. Nothing in it was ever wholly real. Always, always some tincture of the false, the make-believe, the pretend. He was too familiar with faking it. He was with the woman he loved, the woman he wanted to spend his life with, and he was wearing a fake wedding ring. He wanted to be with Sarah without any falsity, without any pretense. He cover-dated her and cover-cover-dated her in Burbank. But he had just wanted to date her. He was now her boyfriend but he was cover married to her. He just wanted to be married to her.

Chuck stopped, his big red shoes almost tripping him. He _did_ just want to be married to her. He'd been living with her as his wife, _his real wife_ , but hadn't really made himself stop and think about what that meant. He wasn't faking except in a formal sense. The discussion of children this morning…Was Sarah willing even to consider marriage? She talked with him of family. But, marriage? Chuck could imagine what, say, Carina would make of marriage, of married people. Saps, suckers. Snoring sleepers in Snoresville. Of course, she'd say the same or worse about parents.

But Sarah was not Carina—she had never been Carina. Chuck was sure Carina knew that before Sarah really did. Despite the similarities in their skills sets and in some of their tastes, Carina belonged to the spy life completely, but Sarah never had. Maybe there had been a time when Carina had almost convinced Sarah that they were the same, convinced Sarah to embrace the spy life as life itself, -but Chuck thought Carina had never gotten Sarah past _almost_.

When Carina had been in Burbank she'd tried to seduce Chuck. Casey had warned him against that when she showed up, but it wouldn't have mattered. Chuck was Sarah's by then and Carina was not going to tempt him. She explained what she had done by saying that she liked to take what Sarah wanted—and he had no doubt that was true, as far as it went. But it wasn't the whole truth. Sarah had regarded Carina as her only friend. But he was not sure Sarah realized that she was Carina's only friend. No doubt Carina was better at superficial attachments than Sarah, so it might look like Carina had other friends, but Chuck was willing to bet that Sarah was Carina's only real friend. Carina's attempt to seduce him hadn't been only a bizarre litmus test of his feelings for Sarah, it had been an attempt to separate Sarah from someone Carina worried would separate Sarah from her, take her friend into another life.

Chuck gave Carina credit—to have sussed that out intuitively in all the cross-currents of Burbank was impressive. Not that Chuck wanted to separate Sarah from Carina. Far from it. Chuck liked Carina, even if she was yet another scary woman in his life. (Of course, as Sarah knew, Chuck liked scary women. As he was coming more and more to understand, he was his mother's son.) Chuck hoped Carina would remain in Sarah's life, his life, their lives. But Carina had as hard a time imagining herself any part of normal life as Sarah did—although not for the same reasons. Carina was not worried that she would be a trespasser in that life, as Sarah was or had been. She had simply had no interest in that life. Nothing spurred her to imagine it. She wanted no part of it.

Right. But of course, there was the problem in the other direction, his direction, the one Sarah had asked about outside the RI store. Why did Chuck, a craver of normalcy, family, children, go to the Farm, join the CIA? Why would a man who craved reality choose fakery? Chuck had hated the Farm. He had been sure he would before he joined. He hated being a Special Agent. If it had not been for Graham handing him Sarah's file and picture, Chuck would have left the spy life behind months ago.

But why had he joined it in the first place? Chuck had no real answer to this question. There were things he could say: the story about Julie, the aimlessness that settled on him as he finished at Stanford. But those would have explained what _Chuck Bartowski_ was supposed to have done, namely cower in a Buy More, as well as, or better than, explaining what _Charles Carmichael_ had done, namely ducking into the shadows with a CIA badge in his pocket. Chuck knew the better answer was that he had intended to prove something to himself—and to his mom and to his sister. But he had never been able to articulate what that something was. He had to admit that he hoped Sarah was no longer interested in the question. Chuck wanted to just leave the whole issue alone. He felt like a trespasser in the spy life. He was still there because of Sarah. _Why had he entered it, to begin with_? Hell, if he knew. He shrugged to himself.

Chuck started walking again. As he neared the trailer, he saw Jan open the door and step out, her clarinet firmly under her arm. She saw Chuck and jumped. "Oh, hey, Chuck. I just needed a place to practice and Liz mentioned that you guys are always gone around now—at least if there's a kids' show—so I used your place. Hope you don't mind." Jan looked embarrassed, but she tried to smile through it.

"Um, no, no, I don't mind. But we locked the door—how did you get in?"

Jan's face fell. She'd obviously hoped not to have to answer that question. "Liz let me in. She's good with locks. She had a bit of a misspent childhood. Convict father. He was a cat burglar. When she got old enough, he started taking her with him. Her gymnastics and her small size made her a natural. Anyway, I'm…oversharing. Liz won't care, I'm sure. I just—well, I know I shouldn't have let her do that for me. But she was going to kill me if I blew on this in her presence and I really wanted to practice…" She tried to smile again.

"Don't worry about it. Just maybe let us know ahead of time." Chuck was annoyed. He did not want to be wary of or suspect Jan or Liz. But they seemed to insist on it.

"Ok, Chuck." Jan gave him a weak little wave and headed away. Chuck went inside. Nothing looked disturbed. The papers and weapons and supplies—all were where they were supposed to be. Clarinet practice. Lock picks. Sarah had told him about having seen—or _maybe_ having seen—a clown's silhouette on the trailer blinds last night.

Chuck had been sure that he and Sarah were not under suspicion themselves, that their cover was solid. He felt less confident of that now.

}o{

Chuck and Sarah had quickly slipped out of their costumes after their second act, and they were walking from the trailer back to the Big Top. Sarah had surprised Chuck by taking the new tranq pistol his mom supplied them. He had his. They both had a couple of trackers. The hope was to at least identify the person Antonio gave the Ring tech to. If possible, they wanted to trail the person, and capture him or her and the Ring tech.

The Big Top was full to bursting. Having had Circus Maximus in town for a day, but closed, had piqued interest. Families had poured in. Sabre and Chesko had been a big hit at both shows. The size and enthusiasm of the crowd were great for performers, terrible for spies. It would be easy for the drop to take place unseen or for the person who took the tech to get away.

Chuck hadn't seen the Grand Finale but a couple of times. Usually, by that time, he and Sarah were too tired to return, and if they were not too tired to return, they had quickly become engrossed in one another. The couple of times they had seen it, it had made Chuck nervous. It was flying trapeze, with releases and catches high above what looked like an inadequate net. Chuck knew it wasn't. He'd seen Maria and her son and her daughters all fall on it deliberately during practice. It's looking inadequate was part of the theater of the act. And it had the desired effect on Chuck, despite his knowledge.

Maria was impressive, especially at her age, although she was not the focal point of the show. The focal point was the two daughters, Elisa and Elena. They were identical twins. Willowy, breathtaking even when not in motion, they both had long, thick auburn hair pulled back into ponytails that flew behind them through the air. Each had a quick, bright smile and dark eyes. They were literally born performers. In the air, their speed and exactness made the crowd marvel and swoon and gasp. They were the flyers. Their brother, Gorgio, compact and muscular, was the catcher. The act turned around him like an axle, but he was almost invisible. His sisters outshone him completely. But he was as good at what he did as they were, and if he had not been so good at it, they could not have been flown so beautifully.

As the act started, as the clowns cleared the center ring, it was clear to Chuck what Antonio had been up to. His deep policy. No doubt, he did like watching his family—but by coming every night, he rendered himself largely invisible to the circus folk. He was just a part of the Grand Finale scenery. And making the drop while the trapeze act went on was unlikely to draw attention, since everyone was looking up, up into the top of the Big Top.

Elise and Elena were swinging. So too Gorgio. The crowd began to sway slightly, moving in sync with the sisters. The released; they become flyers; Gorgio strained toward them, one strong arm for each. The crowd's attention suspended in midair, experiencing the folded, unfolding and unfolded grace of the aerials, sharing for a moment the sister's immunity to the dusty clutches of the earth. While they were in the air, Circus Maximus was most fully itself, most fully alive, the trapeze its exposed, somersaulting heart.

Chuck gasped involuntarily as Gorgio caught the two women at the same time, swinging with them while holding them, and then releasing them again so that they could pivot in midair and each grab her own bar. The crowd exhaled as one when the sisters succeeded in grabbing the bars and swinging away in one direction while Gorgio swung away in the opposite direction. The show was underway. Chuck glanced over. Even Sarah was watching.

Chuck touched her arm and she nodded. Slowly, he worked around to the performer's entrance and slipped under the rope. When one of the workers noticed him, Chuck smiled and the man relaxed. He recognized Chuck. Chuck stationed himself so that he could see Antonio and Sarah. Sarah caught his eye and nodded again. They were ready. It was up to Antonio now.

Elise landed on the perch near the top of the tent. Elena was now flying alone—except for Gorgio. They subtly adjusted their timing, so that Elena was swinging toward the middle of the tent a beat or two behind Gorgio. She released and tucked, spinning. As her spin ended, her arms shot out and Gorgio, swinging back, caught her: a victory over innumerable obstacles, only one of which was gravity.

Chuck looked down just in time to notice that Liz was standing next to Antonio. They spoke to each other for a moment, then Antonio slipped his hand into Liz's purse. She obviously knew he was doing it. She stood stock-still to make it easier for him. Chuck shot a look at Sarah; she was looking at him. She saw it too. She shrugged in confusion. She wasn't sure what was going on.

Antonio finished whatever he was doing, then removed his hand from Liz's purse. They parted company, each heading into a different section of the crowd. Sarah bent her head toward Antonio. She would follow him. Chuck started after Liz. Damn. This would have been hard enough without Liz…doing whatever it was she was doing. Chuck slipped out of the back of the Big Top, making an exit out of the performer's entrance. He loped along, dodging kids and couples, until he reached the door closest to where he last saw Liz. Liz was so small that she was going to be hard to find in the crowd. Even worse, she'd been wearing a light brown coat of unremarkable cut, the perfect thing for disappearing into a large crowd in the dark. Thank God for her strawberry blonde hair. He caught a glimpse of it ahead of him. She had made it through the exit and was walking quickly but not hurriedly toward the public parking lot. Chuck throttled back. As much ground as each of his strides ate up, he'd be right behind her in another couple of them.

Chuck drew in his shoulders and dropped his head, in case she turned far enough around to see him. But she did not seem to be concerned with what might be behind her. She seemed completely focused on whatever, or whoever, was ahead of her. She made her way out into the parking lot, out even farther, until she was standing on the far edge of it. She looked around. Chuck crouched behind a large pickup. Liz was clearly waiting for someone and getting more and more annoyed or anxious or both.

A few minutes later, an old pickup came into the lot. It had only one headlight and, from its sound, it needed a new exhaust system. Liz cringed at the loud noise of the engine. She stepped into the weak light of the single headlight, waving her arms over her head. The truck slowed, stopped, but the engine kept coughing and clacking. Liz walked to the driver's side window. She dug around in her purse, took something out—Chuck couldn't see what—and handed it to the driver. In the dark, Chuck could not tell much about the driver. He or she was small. Wearing a baseball cap. Liz and the driver were talking. Liz was gesticulating angrily with her hands. After a moment, Chuck saw her huff with her whole body. She dropped her head for a second, then she walked around the front of the truck and got in the passenger side.

Chuck hurried toward the bed of the truck. He knew it was a bad idea (in his mind he could hear groans from his instructors at the Farm), but he quickly slipped over the side and into the bed, careful though not to rock the truck or make any noise. Of course, the truck was idling so unsteadily and making so much noise he could probably have hurdled into the bed undetected. There was debris strewn around the bed, old beer cans, rusted tools, nails, and screws. There was an old tarp, held in place by a broken chunk of a cinder block. As the truck began to move, Chuck moved the chunk of cinder block and pulled the tarp over him. The truck rocked and rolled over the uneven ground of the parking lot and then moved onto the smooth pavement, gaining speed while making a deafening noise. The good news was that his jacket and the tarp seemed to be enough to keep him warm against the damp Georgia night. The bad news was that Sarah was going to be so angry she might kill him—if he ever saw her again.

He wondered what happened as Sarah followed Antonio.

* * *

 **A/N2** Hmmm. Is this one cliffhanger with two parts, or a double cliffhanger? I need to know so that I can make the appropriate donation to my _Cliffhanger_ jar. Only a few more chapters of the circus mission to go. Tune in next time for _action_! Chapter 21, "Stand and Deliver". Drop me a line before you go!


	21. Chapter 21: Stand and Deliver

**A/N1** And we continue…

The chapter title here, "Stand and Deliver", is taken from that great old Adam & the Ants song. I used that as my campaign song the year I successfully ran for student body president in high school. The song freaked the faculty out. Maybe it was the trumpets and neighing horse at the beginning? The shrieking wall-of-sound cacophony of the chorus? I dunno. Shrug. –Good memory, though. (Completely cheesy video for the song can be found online.)

Don't own Chuck. Or John Deere. Or any brand of cigarette. No money made.

* * *

 **Turned Tables**

 _The Circus Days and Nights Mission_

* * *

Thursday, February 15, 2008  
Somewhere near Savannah, Georgia  
Richland Estates Trailer Park  
10:47 pm

* * *

CHAPTER 21 Stand and Deliver

* * *

The truck came to a jerky halt, its ancient brakes squalling about misuse. Chuck pulled himself into as small a ball as he could beneath the tarp. He heard no voices, but he heard two doors slam shut. It was dark, but not full dark. There was one working streetlight nearby. As they pulled off the main highway, Chuck had seen the sign: _Richland Estates_. It was a trailer park and, if his brief glimpse of it was accurate before he pulled his head back beneath the tarp like a mock-turtle, it was an ancient trailer park, many of the trailers clearly no longer fit for human habitation, while the others, the inhabited others, were not really in much better shape. The small lawns were disfigured by junked cars, broken kids' toys and random bits of garbage—fast food bags, empty bottles, occasional diapers, and collapsing boxes.

"I gave it to you," Chuck heard Liz's voice, genuinely angry, "I have no idea why you needed to drag me…here." Liz's voice sounded not just angry but strained. "You've taken me to too many places like this…too many times."

"Nobody e looks for anybody here…or in shit places like this." A man's voice—high-pitched but not squeaky, hard. "These places are holes in the world."

Liz huffed again, clearly very unhappy with her situation.

"Hey," the man's voice again, "stop with the 'tude and get over here and lemme squeeze you."

Liz huffed again but there was no more conversation, just the sound of rustling cloth and a long sigh. Male.

"C'mon, let's get inside." The man's voice again. Chuck heard keys jangle, then a door open and close. Silence. Chuck waited for about a minute to move. When he did, he stayed under the tarp, but freed his phone from his jacket pocket and sent a text to Sarah, very briefly telling her he had followed Liz and giving her the name of the trailer park. He jammed the phone back into his pocket. As quietly as he could, he got out from under the tarp and slid over the gate of the truck bed.

Unfortunately, Chuck had not seen the empty beer can on the ground behind the truck, and he crushed it when he stepped on it as he swung his other leg from over the side. _Shit, shit._ First, he loses control of the situation by stowing away in a truck going God-know-where for God-knows-why, and now he makes a rookie mistake, not looking ahead at the spot his foot would fall. He'd had time. He hadn't had to rush. Careless.

He knew why he'd done it—climbed in the truck, hurried unnecessarily, been careless. It was because he liked Liz. Liz was his friend, he couldn't really believe she was involved in Antonio's Ring misdeeds. And he was worried about her—that truck, the driver, her reaction. He couldn't just let her ride away alone—not even with a tracker thrown into the bed of the truck.

But, now, looking around, hoping no one heard the crushing of the beer can, he felt the chill of a doubt. What was Liz doing here? Was this a Ring errand for Antonio? Was it a tryst? Chuck was standing behind the pickup. It was between him and the trailer. There was now a light on inside the trailer. A quick look around suggested that no one else was nearby. The nearest trailer had a roof that had caved in. No one was living there. The other nearby one was in better shape, but dark, and the high grass and weeds around it suggested that it was unoccupied. Chuck went around the front of the truck and softly made his way toward the door of the trailer. He could hear nothing, but hoped if he got to the door, he might be able to make out voices.

He got to the door. He stood still and controlled his breathing. He heard nothing. Then, he thought he heard voices. Leaning in, he turned his head and pressed an ear to the door. It took a moment, but he eventually realized he was listening to a radio. He leaned back—and then heard a sound. He spun his head in time to see the stock of a rifle plunging toward his head.

He saw nothing more.

}o{

Sarah was cursing to herself. Why the hell was Liz involved in this? Now, Sarah and Chuck were separated. Sarah had lost sight of Chuck as he went out the performer's entrance, trying to catch up with Liz. Sarah shook her head—Chuck would have to manage. She had to keep track of Antonio.

He was on the move. The trapeze act was in its culminating stages and the audience was engrossed. Antonio walked down one aisle. He was clearly measuring his pace. Sarah realized he was trying to get to a spot before the big final releases by his daughters above. The crowd all inhaled at the same moment, gazing into the heights of the Big Top, and Sarah fought the urge to look. Antonio slowed by a seat at the end of a row, and passed something to the young woman seated there, like a sprinter passing on a baton. It was over in a split second and Antonio went on down the aisle and out of the Big Top.

Sarah was positioned well. She could see the woman clearly, but the woman had not noticed her. As soon as the crowd began to applaud, the woman stood and began walking quickly to the exit Antonio used. Sarah hurried into the aisle, moving quickly not just to keep up, but to prevent a crowd from forming between herself and the woman. As Sarah exited the Big Top, she surveyed her surroundings, primarily to see if Antonio was keeping watch over the woman. He was nowhere to be seen.

Sarah had slipped a Dodger's cap into her bag earlier, after changing in the trailer, and she fished it out and donned it. The woman was walking slowly, taking her time, looking at the sideshow tents and—for lack of a better term—gawking. But Sarah could tell that it was all to cover her wariness. The woman had been solidly trained. Sarah kept the Dodger's cap low on her head and made sure that her line through the crowd did not simply overlap the woman's line through it. The woman looked back a few times and her eyes passed over Sarah but never lingered. Lots of people were moving generally in the same direction. The woman stopped at a booth and bought a funnel cake. Sarah stepped into a gap between two sideshow tents and waited.

With a disconcerting, dallying daintiness, the woman ate most of the funnel cake, threw the rest in a nearby trashcan, and then carefully wiped her hands with a napkin. She looked around her again, and started toward the public parking lot. Sarah fell in behind her again, back in the crowd.

The woman was clearly heading for a car. She'd reached into her coat pocket and retrieved a set of keys. Sarah could see them in her hand. The woman got to her car and opened the door. Sarah pulled her tranq pistol and fired, running after her dart. She got to the woman before she collapsed. Sarah grabbed one of the woman's arms and slipped under it, catching her. She grabbed the keys from the woman as the woman's hand went limp. Sarah managed to get the woman around the back of the car and to the other side. She put her in the passenger seat. Sarah hurried back to the open driver's side and got in.

Sarah found the key to the car on the chain and started it. She pulled into the line of exiting cars. Once she got out of the parking lot, she grabbed her phone and called Frost.

"Sarah. Given the hour, I assume this is not a social call?" All business, Frost, of course.

"No, Mary. I have taken a Ring agent. At least, I am virtually certain she is a Ring agent. Antonio made a drop to her. But he also made a drop—or what looked like a drop—to one of the other performers, a woman named Liz. Chuck is following her, and I don't know what's going on there. I hope to hear from him soon. Soon.

"I tranquilized the Ring agent and I am in her car heading to Savannah. I will send you a photo as soon as I find a place to question her. She should come to in thirty minutes or so. Hold on a second…" Sarah placed the phone on the car's console, and then, keeping her eyes on the road, she reached into the woman's coat pocket. She pulled out a small, flat device—the one Chuck had photographed and drawn for her. The Ring tech. But what was Chuck chasing, then? Sarah felt her stomach drop. "…The woman has the tech. Can you send someone to get it? I need to interrogate this woman and then I need to find out what is happening with Chuck. After I finish with her, I am going to need someone to take her into custody."

"Ok. I can have an NSA team from Atlanta there inside four hours. Better to keep the CIA out of this until we know what we want to tell Graham. Can you babysit her for that long?"

Sarah was worried about Chuck. "I can—if I have to. I'd rather not. I want to make sure Chuck is ok."

"Me too, Sarah. So, do you have enough tranqs to put her under for that long?"

"Yes," Sarah said, after a moment's calculating, "I will bind and gag her, just in case, but I will tranq her and leave her for the team. I'll text you the motel and room number where I leave her. Do you want me to leave the team the Ring tech?"

Frost was quiet but Sarah could hear her thinking. "No, that's too vital to let out of your sight. We need to understand that. I will send someone I trust, someone who will come to you. Tomorrow. Call me once you know Chuck is ok, Sarah."

"I will."

Sarah hung up and drove, looked for a motel. She found an old, dicey looking place after a few minutes. Parking the car out of the light of the one light, and she went inside and got a room for the night. She drove the car around the motel and slipped into a spot right in front of the room. The woman was still unconscious. Sarah unlocked the door and went in. The room was so dingy that even after she'd turned on the lights, it still seemed dark, shadowy. She grabbed the desk chair—a heavy, utilitarian piece—and pulled it to the middle of an open section of floor between the bed and the bathroom.

She went back out and checked the back seat of the car. Nothing was there. She popped the trunk. Inside was a black backpack, a small toolbox, and a first aid kit. Sarah grabbed the backpack and toolkit and took them into the room, placing them on the bed. Then she got the woman. After checking to see that no one was around, she hoisted her up and drug her into the room, dropping her heavily into the desk chair. She removed her coat and searched her. Nothing. In the coat, in the pocket that had not had the Ring tech in it, Sarah found a small pistol.

Sarah took a quick look inside the backpack. It contained clothes and toiletries, nothing more. Sarah then searched through the toolbox. Luck was with her. In it, she found several zip ties bound with a rubber band. That would keep her from having to tear up the bed sheet. There was also a small, partially used roll of duct tape. She used the zip ties to bind the woman to the chair, hands, and feet. She went into the bathroom and wet a washcloth and grabbed one of the large white bath towels. She put the bath towel out flat on the bed, right in front of the woman. She took all the sharp-edged or pointed tools from the toolbox and lined them up neatly on the towel. She tore off a section of tape and stuck one corner of it to the desk, near where she was standing.

Pulling up the leg of her jeans, she knelt and retrieved one of her knives. Standing back up, knife in hand, she used the other hand to squeeze excess cold water from the washcloth onto the woman's face.

After a moment, the woman jerked in the chair and began to sputter. Sarah leaned in, putting the washcloth against the woman's mouth, and making sure the knife in her other hand was clearly visible. The woman's eyes grew large, as the knife was the first thing that came clearly into view for her. The next was Sarah's face, stony and unreadable beneath the Dodger's cap. And then the woman's eyes flicked to the bed and the display of tools.

Sarah put a finger to her lips, telling the woman to be quiet, then she brandished the knife as an exclamation point for the gesture. The woman nodded her head. Sarah pulled the washcloth slowly from the woman's face. When the woman remained quiet, Sarah gently ran the washcloth over the woman's face, collecting the water that was dripping from her chin and her eyelashes.

The woman was clearly surprised by the gesture. She looked again at the knife in Sarah's right hand, and then back to the washcloth in her left. She looked at the tools on the bed. Confusion filled her face.

"I don't _want_ to hurt you," Sarah said, her confession sounding more like a threat. "I need you to answer some questions. If you do, I will turn you over to a team of agents who will take you into custody. If you do not, I will still turn you over, but only after we have spent time together that…" Sarah slowed for emphasis, "…we will… both… _regret_." The knife flashed in Sarah's hand, underlining her skill and comfort with it.

Sarah could see the woman trying to gather her courage—but then her eyes traveled to the knife again, to the tools, and from them to Sarah's eyes, and the latter undid the woman. The courage she gathered ungathered, ran away. Her shoulders slumped. Sarah sighed inwardly in relief. She would not have used the knife or tools; she had no intention to hurt the woman. But had made the woman believe otherwise. And it was the belief that did the work. The woman had surrendered.

"What is your name?" Sarah kept her voice firm, cold.

"Bianca."

"Ok, Bianca. What are you doing for Antonio Cristiani, for the Ring?"

Bianca blinked, surprise in her amber eyes. "I was supposed to deliver a package to someone in Atlanta tomorrow."

"Do you know who you were to deliver it to?"

"A man who would meet me at the bar of the InterContinental Buckhead, the Southern Art and Bourbon Bar. I'm supposed to wait at the bar at 5 pm tomorrow and transfer the package."

"How is he supposed to recognize you? Has he seen you?" Sarah kept the questions coming, trying to keep the woman off-balance and to give her no time to try again to gather her routed courage.

"No. Never. I've never seen him. I'm supposed to be wearing a little black dress and a solid red scarf. He'll order a gimlet and ask where I got the scarf."

"Are you supposed to give a particular answer?"

"No, the question is all."

"Do you know anything about this man?" The woman started to shake her head, but Sarah stopped her, her tone deliberately neutral. "Don't tell me you don't. We both know you always look for an angle in work like this. I would know something; you know something."

Bianca's eyes narrowed a bit. "Ok, ok. I overheard my handler say something about the Atlanta office of the FBI. I think the guy I'm supposed to meet is a cryptologist or cryptanalyst there. A computer guy, a data guy."

"What's he supposed to do with the tech?"

Bianca shrugged. "I think he has a doctor lined up to implant it. Once it is implanted, if it works like it should, then the guy can basically 'download' anything he sees on the FBI servers. It's what we've been testing the tech for. If this works, we go for the bigger ones—the CIA and NSA."

"But he can't get through the metal detector at the FBI office with that thing implanted," Sarah leaned in toward Bianca again, her physical presence pressuring Bianca to continue.

"Yes, he can. The tech is made of an alloy that does not alert metal detectors. The only real problem is that the tech has been causing personality aberrations that make the implantee…unpredictable." Bianca had clearly given up completely at this point. Her fear of Sarah was now controlling her.

"How unpredictable?"

"That's unpredictable too. Some people just become more intense…more intensely themselves…Some become talkative. Those aren't too bad. But some become wild, paranoid, violent or they become catatonic, or paranoid with fear."

"Is there a limit on how long one of those can stay implanted in someone?"

"Yes, it varies from person to person, but the longer the implant stays in, the more likely aberrations become. A few days is the most."

Sarah got the piece of duct tape from the desk and put it over Bianca's mouth. "Thanks for all that, Bianca. But I need you to be quiet until the team arrives, so I am going to tranq you now." Without waiting for a response, Sarah pulled her tranq pistol quickly and fired several darts into Bianca's abdomen. The woman slumped over almost immediately. Sarah gathered up the tools and the towel and washcloth. She turned the tv on—loud enough to be heard but not loud enough to provoke complaints. Then she threw the room key on the bed. She went to Bianca one last time, checking the zip ties and making sure that she was breathing normally. Satisfied, Sarah left the room, locking the door behind her. Frost's team would make short work of the lock.

Sarah looked at her phone. Chuck had texted.

He hadn't asked for help, although he had told her where he was. She stood for a moment, trying to decide what to do. She was curious how Chuck had ended up at a trailer park. She suspected she would be pissed when she heard the story. But she decided to get the tech back to their trailer at Circus Maximus. If she didn't hear from him soon after she got there, she'd go find him. But this was not Burbank; Chuck was not Chuck Bartowski, he was Chuck Carmichael. And, Sarah now knew, although he might be reluctant, Chuck Carmichael could be a spy when he needed to be.

}o{

Chuck trekked back to reality painful step after painful step. His head ached; his neck and shoulder were pulsating. He felt something wet and warm against his lips. His eyes snapped open. Liz!

She was standing in front of him, wiping his face with a white cloth. He reached up and grabbed her hand, and as he pushed the cloth from his face, he saw that it was pink with blood and water. Chuck then realized that he was seeing in mono—he was seeing only with his right eye. He put his other hand up to his eye and felt the swelling there.

Liz reached out and pulled his hand away from his eye, wincing for him. "Don't, Chesko, your hands are dirty. God, I am so sorry." Liz turned from him to the kitchen sink behind her, rinsing out the cloth. The counter on both sides of the sink was stacked high with dirty dishes, the ones on the bottom furry with growing fungus. Chuck looked around while Liz's back was turned.

The rest of the insides of the trailer matched the counters. Empty pizza boxes, empty beer cans, full ashtrays. In one corner, an irregular piece of plywood was on the floor, held in place by what looked like the other part of the cinder block in the back of the pickup. The trailer must have a hole in the floor, and the plywood was there to keep animals from climbing inside. In a badly beaten armchair in the corner, its fabric torn and dirty, sat the man. He was small, and although his hair was whitening and thinning, it was clear that at one time it had been reddish blond. He had a John Deere hat in his hands, and he was rolling its bill, staring at Chuck, half in fear, half in anger.

Liz turned back around, her cute face marred by worry and by streaked by trails of now-dried tears. "Sorry, Chuck. Dad just knew someone was outside. He thought you might be…um…an old _friend_ of his. He had no idea it was a new friend of mine." She grabbed one of Chuck's hands and scrubbed it. Chuck realized his hands must have gotten dirty first in the bed of the truck and then again when he collapsed after…Liz's dad…hit him with the butt of his rifle. Liz grabbed his other hand and scrubbed it. "What are you doing here? How did you get here?"

Chuck looked at her, unsure how to answer the question. "I…I was in the parking lot and I saw you get in the truck…You seemed upset. I was worried about you."

Liz's face scrunched into a weary smile. She turned and tossed the washcloth, underhanded, into the sink. She looked at her dad. "Any chance at all there's one more clean washcloth…" she slowed, frustration and embarrassment in her voice, "…in this palace?" Her father winced and then stood. Chuck could see that one of his heavy boots had a sole that had been built up. Evidently, that leg was shorter than the other. Her father walked out of the living room into the narrow hallway on that end of the trailer and then he disappeared into a doorway.

"His life is difficult, Chuck. He thought you were someone who had come to hurt him or to hurt me. He won't let anyone hurt me." She looked down the hallway where he had disappeared and her look, although angry, was devoted too. "So, how did you get here? You've told me why, but not how."

"I stowed away in the back of your dad's pickup, hid under that old tarp." Chuck bit the bullet.

Liz's brow clenched. One eyebrow went up and she fixed him with a penetrating gaze. "You did all that because you were worried about me," she asked, doubtfully.

Chuck could hear sounds of her father rummaging in the bathroom. "Look, Liz, I saw Antonio give you something during the trapeze act. And I don't trust that guy. So, I got worried about what might be going on between you two. I know-not my business, but...Then I saw the truck drive up in the parking lot…and, well, like I said, I could tell you were upset."

Liz seemed to believe him, although he could tell that she felt there was more to the story. "Well, if you must know, Antonio gave me some money for Dad. I mean it was an advance for me, but I asked for it for Dad's sake." She gestured around them. "Dad's living arrangements have gotten awful. He can't keep a job. He ends up following the circus half the time, doing odd jobs in the nearby towns, but barely getting by. Sometimes, like now, things get bad enough that I need to do something to make sure he's got a roof and food. Otherwise, his odd jobs will get more and more…odd…and then the money will go for bail, not food."

Her dad came out of the room—the bathroom—empty-handed. He shrugged. "No more clean cloths." He walked past Chuck and out the door, fishing a pack of non-filter Kools out of his pocket, smacking it against the heel of his hand and putting one in his mouth. "Gonna get some air."

Liz watched him step out. When he did, she got the other chair like the one Chuck was in—the two chairs that matched the small kitchen table—and she sat down. "Chuck, it's…well, it's sort of amazing you would go so far to help a friend—but that can't be all there is to it. What's the entire story?" Sarah had told Chuck that Serious Liz existed, but he never expected to see her. But he was seeing her now.

"You're right. I…I don't like Antonio. I asked him for an advance myself," Chuck offered, thinking quickly, going with a hunch, "…he agreed, but he wanted to attach strings to it." Chuck let his shoulders slump, as if he were unwilling to go on."

"Yeah," Liz agreed after a moment's silence, "he's a scary scumbag. He hasn't attached any strings to the couple of advances he is giving me, but they are coming if I keep asking. I'm just not sure if they'll be attached to…me or…to my dad."

"Antonio knows about your dad? Jan told me a little about your dad. I hope you don't mind. But Antonio knows about your dad's past—and your work with him?"

"Yes. Dad tried to get a job at Circus Maximus a while ago, and thought maybe Antonio would be willing to take on an ex-con, especially if the ex-con was willing to come clean about his past. But it didn't work. Antonio turned him down. So, yes, Antonio knows. And he knows I worked with dad; dad let that slip."

"What did you mean when you said strings might get attached to you?"

Liz gave Chuck a lasting, flat look. "Antonio likes to watch me work out new tricks on the trampoline…"

"Oh." Long, long pause. Chuck blushed at his own cluelessness. Then worry gripped him. "But—you…wouldn't, right?"

"Perform new tricks for Antonio? Um, no, Chesko. My conversation, my behavior may not always suggest it, but even I have my limits." Liz grinned at Chuck but there was none of her normal merriment in the smile, just an acknowledgment of the sad fact of men like Antonio.

"I'm sorry, Liz, that came out wrong. I only meant to ask if there as some way he could…compel you or think that he could compel you..."

"No, Chuck—and frankly I'm sure I can kick Antonio's ass. I am tiny but mighty. But what about you? What strings can he attach to you, Chuck? Oh, Lord, is he after Sarah?"

"No, no, nothing like that. Before clowning, I worked in electronics. Antonio'd like me to update some systems, install some cameras, stuff like that…I'd get the advance, but ultimately that work would be done for free. The advance would come out of my pay."

Chuck hated lying to Liz, he hated it, but he could see no way to handle the current situation other than to do so. He tried to stay as close to what was true as he could, or what he guessed would be true if he went to Antonio and asked for an advance.

He wondered about Sarah. Where was she? What was happening? If Antonio made the drop of the Ring tech, Sarah would be following the real trail.

Liz looked at Chuck for a minute, assessing him. He could tell that she half-believed him and half-wanted to believe him but did not wholly believe him. He was actually ok with that, if she didn't push him for more answers.

The trailer door opened and Liz's dad came in, accompanied by damp cold and the stale smell of cigarettes. He was pale. "He's here," he announced, marching across the room.

Liz's face fell. "Who, Dad?"

"That Antonio shithead. I called earlier today—after we talked on the phone. I'm gonna tell the ass-wipe to keep his mind outta the gutter and his hands off'n my liddle girl. I never thought he'd have the guts to come…" He opened a small closet and pulled out a rifle. Liz scrambled to him, grabbing the rifle and trying to take it from him.

"So that's who you were...No, Dad! Don't make what's sure to be a bad situation worse." Liz's dad was glowering at her but was also indecisive.

Chuck felt under his jacket. His tranq pistol was still holstered under it. He had forgotten all about it since coming to. Had Liz or her father seen it? He'd have to worry about that later. He stepped closer to the two of them. "Look, Mr. Liz's dad," Chuck started, and they both said "Jim!" at the same time, "um…Mr. Jim, believe me when I tell you that you don't want to push Antonio." Chuck stepped over to the window, pulling back the smoked-stained curtain. A car was pulling into the overgrown gravel driveway. It stopped next to the pickup. "Antonio is a…bad man." The headlights went off and Chuck heard door slams—plural, three. Antonio had not come alone. Chuck peeked out again and in the dim light of the nearby streetlight, he recognized Antonio, George, BonBon, and Saul, Cupcake. They were still in their clown get-ups. Chuck couldn't suppress a chuckle at the thought: _Antonio had brought a BonBon and a Cupcake to a tranq gunfight_.

Jim and Liz both looked at Chuck funny when he dropped the corner of the curtain. He shrugged. "Antonio has two men with him," he looked at Liz particularly, "George and Saul." She nodded. There'd been no more sound from outside, so Chuck peeked again. The three men were standing in front of the car. Chuck could see now that George had a baseball bat, it's narrow end in his hand, and its fat end resting on the ground. Chuck could see no other weapons, but that, of course, did not mean they did not have any. Chuck again dropped the corner of the curtain. He looked at Jim. "What exactly did you say to Antonio, Jim?"

Jim didn't answer, but that was his answer. He'd obviously gone too far on the phone. Antonio had not come for a personable chat. He'd come to settle a score. Chuck thought about Antonio—how would this play out? Either Jim would get a beating or worse than a beating, or Liz would have to…volunteer…to keep it from happening.

"Liz, does Antonio know you are here?"

"No, I never said anything to him about my plans. And I didn't even plan to be here. I had planned just to hand Dad the money…" Chuck saw Jim frown at himself.

Chuck had gotten himself into this. Now he needed to get the three of them out of it.

"Jim, get out here. You and I need to do a little work on your manners. Don't make us come in there and get you." Antonio's voice was cold, commanding.

"Ok, Jim, here's the plan. You go out there and talk. Stay back. Don't get close. They are here to hurt you. I'm going to go out the back door and I will take care of them. Liz, stay in the trailer." Both nodded. Jim let Liz have the rifle and he took a deep breath before he opened the door and stepped outside.

When Jim closed the door, Chuck moved quickly to the back door. He opened it, and, after making a _stay here_ gesture to Liz and seeing her nod, he went out. He pulled his tranq pistol. He moved circumspectly around to the end of the trailer. He needed to get behind the three men. For a variety of reasons, he did not want them to know he was involved in this. Jim's pickup was between Chuck and the men, offering him some cover. But he needed to wait long enough to be sure that they were completely focused on Jim.

Jim was standing on the little cinder block steps in front of the trailer door. "That you, Antonio? You bring other guys? Thought this's uh-tween us?"

Crouched down, Chuck took off as soon as Jim spoke. He made it to a stand of mailboxes at the end of the yard. As far as he could tell, he had not been noticed. Antonio and the two men were closing in on Jim. George had hefted the bat, resting it on his shoulder like a major-leaguer. Silently, Chuck snuck as close as he dared behind the three.

Chuck realized that Jim saw him. Jim stepped toward the three men, holding their attention. Chuck stopped and stood. He took careful aim. George had taken the bat of his shoulder and was about to swing it at Jim. Chuck shot him first, and then squeezed off two other shots in quick succession. His aim was true. Even with one eye. Each of the three men crumpled onto the gravel. Jim looked at Chuck like Chuck was an alien.

"Whadda-hell was that?" Jim watched Chuck holster the tranq pistol. "Shit. _Who are you_?"

Chuck shot Jim a look. "We don't have time for that. Get Liz and get some things." Jim immediately did as Chuck asked, going back into the trailer and coming out a few minutes later with Liz and a paper grocery sack that looked like it had clothes stuffed in it.

In the meantime, Chuck had collected his darts, and gotten Antonio and Saul into the backseat of the car. Jim helped him add Antonio. Liz watched it all in open-mouthed amazement. Chuck shut the back door of the car and walked to Jim and Liz. "Jim, don't come back here until Circus Maximus leaves town the day after tomorrow. Do not come to the circus camp." Chuck reached into his back pocket and pulled out his wallet. He took out all the cash and handed it to Jim.

"Find a place to stay. Order in. Keep your head down. For now, I need you to follow me in your pickup. I'm going to leave these clowns somewhere. When I do, I'll get back into the bed of the truck and you can drop us at the circus." Chuck gave them no time for response. He got into the car and backed out.

Jim and Liz got in the pickup and followed. Chuck found a rest stop soon along the highway. He pulled in and parked the car in the spot most distant from the building that housed the Welcome to Savannah Center and the restrooms. Jim's pickup was roaring and clacking behind the car. Chuck swung himself up easily into the bed and hit the top of the cab a couple of times quickly, a signal to go. He sat down in the bed and felt the adrenaline crash he knew was coming. He wrapped himself up in the tarp. He pulled his phone from his jacket pocket. Sarah had sent him a text just moments before.

 _Back at the circus with the package. Are you ok?_

 _Worried._

He responded.

 _Ok._

 _On my way now._

 _Full story in person._

He added a heart emoji and got one in return.

Jim stopped the pickup on the side of the road near the circus camp. Chuck jumped out of the back and Liz stepped out of the front. Jim started to ask Chuck something, but Liz cut him off with a look. He waved his thanks and rattled away.

Liz stared hard at Chuck. "So, you are not just a clown, eh, Chesko?" Chuck nodded despite the rhetorical question. "And Sabre, not just a knife-thrower?" Nod. "And that act—a smidgen of autobiography?" Nod. "And the marriage—not so much, right?"

Chuck finally spoke—regret palpable in his voice. "Not so much." Liz grabbed him and hugged him hard, as if to reassure him.

"But the love between you two—that's as real as shit, isn't it?" She wasn't really asking a question this time either, but again Chuck nodded, looking at her a little funny. "Sorry," she said in genuine apology, "Dad's language rubs off on me. I won't forget what you did tonight, Chuck. This could've been a…bad, bad night. I don't know what you are other than a clown—except, I know that you are a real friend, really good at being a friend." She grabbed him again and kissed his cheek hard.

"C'mon," she chirped, "if I know anything, it's that Sabre is going to be on a knife's edge until you are hilt deep in her." She gave Chuck her cheekiest grin and threw her arms out wide. "Aaaand, _I'm back_!" Pause. "Although, now that I think about it, that line was more disturbing than I intended..."

Chuck shook his head slowly and followed Liz's chuckle meekly back into camp. As they neared the trailers, Chuck stopped her. "Liz, we need to talk about tonight, but it can wait until tomorrow. It's late."

"That's fine." She spoke softly. "Jan's gonna be waiting up for me. I'll have to talk her down. She hates it when I meet with Dad. Something always seems to go wrong. Be sure that Sarah checks that eye and that bump on your head."

They parted company after another hug.

Chuck was so excited to see Sarah—but less excited to tell her his story.

* * *

 **A/N2** Folks have been so kind to review these chapters and so kind in the reviews. Thankee, thankee, thankee.

Tune in next time. Circus Maximus becomes a very dangerous place for our heroes. An old friend makes an appearance. Dark clowns gather. Liz takes a vow of silence. (No, not really.) All in Chapter 22, "The Flop".


	22. Chapter 22: The Flop

**A/N1** We are in the home stretch of the mission. Thanks for sticking with me as I have played Ringmaster Zettel.

Thanks so much for reading and reviewing.

Don't own Chuck.

* * *

 **Turned Tables**

 _The Circus Days and Nights Mission_

* * *

Friday, February 16, 2008  
Outside of Savannah, Georgia  
Circus Maximus Camp  
8:48 am

* * *

CHAPTER 22 The Flop

* * *

"So, I hopped in the back of the truck and stowed away…" Chuck stopped.

The stern blue disapproval of Sarah's gaze shut his mouth. She was shaking her head gently in disbelief.

Last night, when Chuck arrived back at the trailer, Sarah hadn't asked any questions. At first, she had been too alarmed. And then she had been too relieved. And then she had been too… _too_. She had tended to his eye and checked his head. He seemed fine. When she was sure of that, she yielded to her need for him and to his for her, and they had fallen asleep after their mutual yielding.

But now that they were both up, Sarah demanded the full story with all the detail-trimmings.

"Chuck, I know you know the rule book. You can quote it to me verbatim. You know that you should have used a tracker and then trailed the pickup. You shouldn't have gotten engaged without backup." Sarah sat up in the bed, leaning on one straight arm, turned toward Chuck, who still had his head on his pillow. "If you had told me this last night, we wouldn't have…" She let the sentence trail off.

"Really," Chuck asked, his tone skeptical, "if I had told you, we wouldn't have…?"

Sarah glowered at him for a moment—but then her resolve failed her. "Ok, we would have…but I would have enjoyed it a little…less."

"Really," Chuck asked, his tone still skeptical, "if I had told you, you would have enjoyed it…less?"

Sarah tried to glower again but couldn't muster it. "Ok, I would have enjoyed it just as much, but I'd have been less…vocal about my enjoyment…"

"Really," Chuck asked, his tone familiar, "if _mmmffttt_ …"

Sarah kissed him before he could go on. When she finished: "Ok. Really… _not_." She poked him in the ribs, wiping the small, self-satisfied smile from his face. Then she kissed him again. "I love you, Chuck. Please don't take unnecessary chances." Chuck nodded solemnly, not kidding anymore.

After a few seconds passed, he beamed at her. "Sarah, I love you too. And you aren't the only one who was… _vocal_ last night."

"No…" Sarah agreed, recalling, "I seem to remember someone saying my name—repeatedly—along with various verbs and adjectives…and exclamations. Sometimes the same word for each..."

Chuck blushed as Sarah laughed and hugged him. "What can I say, you affect all my parts…of speech," he confessed.

They stayed wrapped up with each other for a few minutes. Sarah broke the silence. "I called your mom last night after I got your text. She says that the courier for the Ring tech will be here around midday. Do you have a kids' show to do?"

"No, not today. So, I can stay around the trailer. We're going to have to talk to Liz—and Jan. You now know the details of last night. I never said I was a spy; I never said you were; I never explained why we are here. But Liz is smart, clearly. I'd say she's got a pretty good idea about all that."

"You know, Chuck, I'm glad we can tell them some of it. I'm glad they aren't involved. I think they are the first non-spy friends I have ever made. It's nice. Even if Liz is…you know, Liz." They both chuckled.

"Yeah," Chuck agreed, thinking about Liz and her father, and about Liz's life with him. "You and Liz have a lot in common—more, anyway, than I would have guessed before yesterday." Chuck paused, then continued, making a tentative suggestion. "Maybe someday the two of you can talk about some of that." He felt Sarah nod against his chest.

They were silent again, but each tightened their hold on the other.

"So," Chuck began after kissing the top of Sarah's head, "what happens at the Southern Art and Bourbon bar tonight? Is someone going to meet the FBI guy, the Ring guy, there?"

"Yes, I can't do it—we have our two shows today. Frost said she would have an agent and a team at InterContinental, at the bar, this afternoon. The plan is to take him and interrogate him. Once the Ring figures out that both he and Bianca are missing, they'll likely connect the dots that lead back here, Chuck. Our time at Circus Maximus is almost over."

"I know. I will miss it." He was quiet for a long moment. "But you are going to keep the Sabre costume, right?"

Sarah lifted her head and grinned. "Are you prepared to beg?"

"Before you are in the suit or after?"

"Both."

"Oh, yeah, absolutely, both."

She laughed and ran her hand oh-so-softly around his eye. "The swelling's gone down, and you can still see fine, right?" She waited and Chuck nodded. "The bruising looks bad. It's quite a shiner. You're going to have to explain it to folks." He nodded.

Chuck could see anger and fear gathering in her eyes as she looked at his injury. "What am I going to do with you? You manage to get cold-cocked by a limping elderly cat burglar, but then manage to take out three Ring agents—two of them evil clowns—in three shots with one eye. You hardly make sense, Agent Carmichael." She leaned down and kissed his swollen eye tenderly, barely brushing it with her lips.

Chuck looked up at her. As always, when she kissed him with such tenderness, something sweet and beautiful rioted in his blood. She said _he_ hardly made sense—yet, there _she_ was, snuggled against him, kissing him so tenderly his heart ached, and she had been the Ice Queen, Graham's Wildcard Enforcer, a CIA assassin. No one could be long-divided by his or her past life without remainder, but particularly not Sarah Walker. No matter how much of her he knew—anyone knew—there was always so much more to know.

Chuck's eyes brimmed with sudden tears. Concern swept Sarah's face. "Did I hurt you?"

"No, Sarah, you make me better."

}o{

After breakfast in the cookhouse, Sarah headed back to the trailer. She and Chuck had eaten with Jan and Liz, but they couldn't really talk there in public.

Jan and Liz were going to come to the trailer in a few minutes. Chuck had gone to do a quick check on the props for their act. Sarah would check her knives later.

Just as Sarah entered the trailer, her phone rang. Graham.

"Hello, Director."

"Hello. Report?"

Sarah collected herself and began. "We've discovered that Antonio is using some of the circus clowns to move Ring tech around. We are optimistic we can acquire the tech ourselves the next time a clown is sent to pick it up—and we expect that to happen in the next couple of days, likely while the circus is in Mobile, Alabama."

"Good. Do you need backup or anything I can provide?" Graham's voice sounded pinched, anxious. "I…we…the CIA needs to get our hands on that tech as soon as possible."

"Yes, sir, and we are doing all we can. But we need to be careful. Antonio has a number of circus folks involved and we are doing our best to move quickly without blowing our cover."

"Ok, understood. But be as quick as possible." Graham was trying to smooth out his tone.

"Yes, sir. Anything else?"

"One more thing. Can you talk freely? Are you alone?" A chilly breeze entered Graham's voice.

Sarah felt her stomach tighten. "I am alone."

"Once you are back in Washington, I am going to _need_ you to undertake some missions—solo missions. If you insist on remaining partners with Carmichael, I will allow it. But I need you to also do solo missions for me…important CIA missions."

"Sir, Agent Carmichael and I make a good team. I want to continue our partnership. I'd rather not also have to undertake solo missions—especially if I would be unable to tell my partner what I am doing."

There was a tomb-like silence from Graham's end of the phone. "Agent Walker, I am aware that you and Agent Carmichael are sleeping together."

Sarah felt dizzy for a second. How should she respond?

Graham went on, as if entitled. "I need to know that you can still function as my…Enforcer…or I will be…forced to end..." Graham let the word hang in midair for a decisive moment, "…your partnership with Carmichael. I'm not losing my Enforcer to Carmichael." Graham stuffed the three syllables of Chuck's name with infinite contempt. "I've indulged this whim of yours, I've let you scratch the itch, let you take your walk on the tame side. I assumed you would be done with him long ago. If you—for whatever unimaginable reason—want to continue to share his bed, you _will_ undertake the side missions I assign you and accept the conditions I stipulate. Is that understood? All of it?"

Sarah felt the implied threat for what it was. Graham was not talking just about ending her partnership with Chuck—he was talking about ending Chuck. _Son of a bitch._ Sarah also had a confident guess about these side missions, these solo missions. Graham wanted to use her to dig himself out of the hole he was in, use her to strike back at the Ring. She wanted to tell him to go to hell; she and Chuck would take their chances.

But if Graham wanted to use her that way, then he must believe he knew where to strike. Graham must believe he had actionable intel about the Ring, maybe even about the Ring Elders. She could not toss that possibility aside, no matter how tempted she was.

Sarah needed to talk to Chuck and to Frost.

"Yes, sir. _Understood_. When we wrap things up here and I return to Washington…I will undertake the solo missions."

"Good. I expect to hear from you in the next couple of days and to talk missions soon after that." The line went dead.

Sarah called Frost.

}o{

Jan and Liz were listening carefully as Sarah explained. "…Chuck and I are undercover law enforcement officers. Let's not worry about our agency. We have reason to believe that there are systematic illegal activities taking place in Circus Maximus—and that they are controlled by Antonio. We're trying to understand what is going on and to stop it."

Jan's face was thoughtful, worried. "Do you believe the entire family is involved, all the Cristiani's, mother, son, and daughters?"

Chuck shook his head. "No, although we aren't sure about that. So far there has been no confirmation that the other family members are involved. Really, there is no evidence to suggest that they are."

"But it can't just be Antonio, right?" Liz added. "He's got help—BonBon and Cupcake, at least, I'm guessing."

"Yeah, those two—and Greasy," Chuck noted.

"Figures," Liz grumbled, "…figures a clown named after a lubricant would be a bad guy. I mean, what were his other clown name choices? Vaseline? Slippery Stuff? KY? And I don't mean _Kentucky_ …" Liz was pissed.

"Look, Liz, Jan, we need you not to breathe a word of this. Knowing puts you in danger, even though you don't know details. After last night, it is likely that things are going to get tricky here. You can't change your behavior around Antonio or any of the clowns," Chuck urged.

"We don't think Antonio suspects us—or if he does, he is unsure about his suspicions. But he is going to wonder about last night at your dad's place, Liz. Did he know you were going there?"

"No, Chuck, I didn't know until Dad started begging me to visit for a while. I didn't say anything to Antonio about any plans."

"Good. Still, Antonio will wonder. He may come around, asking about last night. The two of you should come up with a story. Keep it simple, make sure you agree about it."

Liz pointed at Chuck's eye. "Will that make Antonio suspicious of you, or more suspicious?"

Chuck grimaced. "Maybe. They never saw me. They never saw your dad clobber me. The eye may make them curious, but it doesn't prove anything. I think I can brazen it out if they ask."

"What happens to Circus Maximus if you two take Antonio down?" Jan's was clearly worried.

Chuck processed his answer as he gave it. "Well, remember, Antonio runs Circus Maximus, but he is not the owner. I'm sure someone would step in and take over. Probably the more interesting question is what happens to the Grand Finale if any of the other Cristiani's are involved, or if they refuse to work for anyone else. That could be bad news for the Circus long term. But, short term, I think the show goes on."

Jan nodded and looked at Liz, who smiled weakly and shrugged.

Sarah leaned toward the small table, looking at Liz. "Did your dad do what Chuck said? Did he find another place to stay? Will he remain hidden until the circus is out of town?"

"Yeah, yeah, I think so. I talked to him on the phone after we got back last night, and he was at a motel. He'd…he'd had a bit to drink—Chuck was kind to give him money but he gave Dad too much; anytime Dad has extra, he tends to...liquify it. Luckily, he's a drowsy drunk, so he's likely sleeping it off in his room now." There was a note of shame in Liz's voice. But then her tone changed: "Say, have either of you seen Juvi today?" Chuck and Sarah both shook their heads. "We haven't either. It's been a while since we saw him. Was he at the kids' show yesterday?"

Chuck nodded. "He was. But I haven't seen him since. Tell you what, let me know when you do see him. I'll do the same. Last I knew, Antonio was unhappy with him."

They all sat in worried silence for a little while. Liz checked her watch reluctantly, then looked at Jan. "We need to go and work on the new ending of the routine."

"Yes. Chuck, thanks again for last night. Really. And you two do what you need to do. Antonio is a bad guy. I'd rather not work than work for a villain." Liz nodded in agreement. Chuck stood up and they both hugged him, and then they pulled Sarah up for hugs too.

}o{

Chuck walked over to the cookhouse and got a cup of coffee. It had been sitting on the heat too long and had acquired the acrid bitterness of cooked coffee. He was so tired he didn't care. He just needed a jolt.

As he carried the cup back to the trailer, he slowed, stopped. There was a man pulling on the trailer door. He was dressed in a trench coat and a plain black baseball cap.

Chuck stood in indecision. Then the man turned—and a familiar bearded face met Chuck's gaze. Martin, Martin Gomez. Chuck's analyst buddy who had played the part of Morgan Grimes back in Burbank. Of course, Chuck's mom had sent him to be the courier of the Ring tech! That must have been why she hadn't set up any protocol for identifying the courier. His mom's version of an inside joke.

Frost had known Martin before Chuck knew him. He'd been an analyst for her for several missions. She respected him. In Chuck's first lonely weeks after the Farm, when he played hermit in his apartment if not on a mission, Frost half-pulled, half-pushed him through Langley to introduce him to Martin.

The two men had bonded over their love of tech and their loneliness, playing video games together and commiserating about failed relationships or missed opportunities. Their time in Burbank had further cemented the bond between them.

"Hey, Chuck," Martin said in a stage whisper when Chuck was near enough to hear it. "I'm here for the _you know what_."

"Martin, don't talk about the _you know what_." Chuck rasped, craning around.

"Why not, man? You just did. What do you think? Do you like my outfit? I was going to get a fedora, but I didn't have time." He grinned, pleased with himself.

Chuck opened the trailer and grabbed Martin's arm, dragging him inside. "Part of being a good spy is not dressing like a spy. Or stage whispering." Chuck stopped himself, realizing he was stage-whispering too. He shut the door, put down the coffee, and Martin sat down on the end of the bed.

"Sorry, Chuck, but the last time I was a spy I got to wear a horrid green Buy More polo shirt. I thought this time I could do it right." He unbelted the trench coat, then laboriously unbuttoned it. He sloughed it off, revealing a shoulder holster. Chuck did a double-take.

"What the hell, Martin?" Martin grinned and unsnapped the holster, pulling out the gun. Chuck ducked his head, put one leg over the other, and covered his crotch with both hands. "Good God, put that away." Martin's grin just got wider, wilder. He closed one eye and he aimed the gun at Chuck's head. He pulled the trigger.

Cold water splashed in Chuck's face. Martin doubled over with laughter. Chuck walked to the counter and pulled off a sheet of paper towel, wiping his face dry.

"A squirt gun? I assume you didn't wear that whole contraption on the plane?" Martin shook his head.

"You actually stopped along the way and put it on before you got here?" Martin nodded his head.

"All for that moment?"

Nodding, Martin re-doubled over in laughter. "Sorry again, Chuck. I couldn't resist. Besides, the trench coat would've seemed half-assed unless I was packin' heat." Chuck glowered damply and Martin looked a little sheepish. "Ok, maybe that was a bit much. Say, dude, I see you must have said the wrong thing to Sarah. She whacked you a good one. Nice shiner. I told you that woman was scary."

"Sarah didn't do this. It happened last night. Long story. How soon is your return flight?"

Martin fished around in his pants pocket, finally retrieving a crumpled piece of paper he proceeded to uncrumple. "Two hours, so I don't have much time. Do you have the…"

"Don't say it," Chuck rushed in, "it's right here." Chuck opened the small cabinet over the sink and pulled out a box of Wheaties. He reached down and dug among the flakes. After a moment, he pulled out the Ring tech. He handed it to Morgan, who picked up his trench coat from the bed and slipped the tech into an interior pocket.

"Quite a prize in those Wheaties there, Chuckster."

At that moment, the door opened and Sarah stepped in. She froze when she saw Martin. Then, slowly, a small grin appeared on her face. "Morgan, so good to see you!"

"No, it's _Martin_ , not Morgan." Martin huffed, hurt.

Sarah gave him a supercilious look, and he winced. "Oh. You know that. Of course, you know that."

"Did Chuck give you the _you know what_?" Sarah looked from Martin to Chuck.

Martin gave Chuck an I-told-you-so grin. "Yeah, I've got it." He patted his trench coat. Chuck just shook his head.

Sarah had not noticed the coat until Martin patted it. "You've got to be kidding. A trench coat? Where'd you stash Natasha, _Boris_? Did they run out of fedoras in Pottsylvania? Fearless Leader is now equipping his agents with squirt guns?"

Martin turned to Chuck, amusement and shock commingled on his face. Chuck just grinned, shrugging.

Smiling, Martin commented, "I've told you before, Chuck, she's fantastic."

Chuck gazed warmly at Sarah. "Yeah, Martin, she is."

They all talked for a few minutes, but Martin had to go. He gave Sarah a quick, awkward hug. Smiling sneakily, he gave Chuck a very formal handshake before grabbing him and leaping into his arms, holding Chuck like a dwarf grizzly wrapped around a tree. He slid off him as Sarah chuckled at his antics. Chuck blushed. As Martin went out, he winked at Sarah. "Hetero life-partners hug."

}o{

Martin got into the cab on the edge of the camp and was gone. Chuck had followed at a distance to make sure he got away.

Chuck hurried back to the trailer to get dressed for the first show of the day. Sarah was already dressed when Chuck entered. He took a moment to look at her in the Sabre costume. Then he made himself stop. They'd never get ready if he looked at her much longer.

She looked at him, fully aware of his entire train of thought, and she smirked at him. "We both need to focus, Chuck. Who knows when the Big Top comes crashing down on us? Sit down, Chuck, we need to talk. I have something to tell you and haven't had a chance. Graham called me this morning…"

"He did? You're just now telling me?" Chuck tried not to sound hurt.

"There wasn't time. There's hardly time now, but I couldn't wait any longer." Sarah went on and told him about the call.

Chuck felt his face flush with anger. "He is such a son of a bitch, Sarah."

"He is, Chuck. But he is no fool. He knows the spy game. If he thinks he has actionable intel on the Ring, he probably does. It means too much to him not to get it right. After I talked to him, Chuck, I called Frost; I talked to your mom. I told her what I told you. She advises us to play along, at least until we find out what Graham knows."

Chuck stood up. "Play along? What does that mean? Does that mean you actually go on these missions—by yourself, to terminate Ring agents or Elders?"

"I don't know, Chuck. We will just have to see what happens. I don't want to go on these missions. If I do, I will try to find some way of handling them like we handled the mission in Batumi. I am not going back to wet work—not unless it is the only way out for us. I've chosen _us_ , Chuck. I want to be out of this life."

"I want out too. You know how much. But we are in a maze, Sarah, and what looks like an exit may only wind us deeper into the maze. I don't believe we can get out through any door marked 'Graham'. Graham is no exit." Chuck had gotten more and more vehement. He could see Sarah retreat a little, lean back.

"Let's not argue about this, Chuck. Right now, it's just a possibility. Frost will have the Ring tech later today, when Martin gets it to her. Maybe she will be able to make something of it, give us a direction independent of Graham. Let's see how it all plays out."

Chuck groused and plopped down on the bed. "'Play along'…'Play this out'. Too much 'play' in all this for me, Sarah." He dropped his head in his hands, running his hands through his hair.

He felt Sarah's hand on his neck, tentative but warm. "Chuck, if we have to face this decision, we will face it together—and decide together. It may never be a decision we have to make."

Chuck sighed and let himself fall back on the bed. He stared at the ceiling for a while. Sarah rested her hand on his chest.

"Listen, Sarah. You know I love my mom. She's helping us in the best way she knows how. She also wants us, you and me, to work out. But my mom only knows the spy life. She has chosen it at every turn. Over her family. Even if her intentions are good, I'm not sure she can guide us out of this life. All she knows is the maze.

"I don't mean that I don't trust _her_ —she's not going to lie to us, I don't think—I mean I don't trust her _judgment_. Not where what we want is concerned. She's been in the shadows for so long I'm not sure she has robust memories of sunlight any more…" He reached up and took the hand she had rested on his chest and pulled it to his mouth, turning it over to kiss the back of it. He pulled it slowly from his lips, and gazed at the bridal set on her ring finger. His eyes flicked to her for a second. He knew she noticed.

"Chuck, I want to be done with faking, with pretend. I want…I want everything between us to be real."

"Me too, Sarah, me too." Chuck looked at the rings on her finger again.

Fake wedding rings, circus rings, the Ring. It felt like they were surrounded.

}o{

They finished their second act and went slowly back to the trailer. Both were dragging. Sarah knew the night before had exhausted them both. Too much activity on top of too much activity.

They saw Antonio heading to the Big Top. He passed them without a second glance. When he did, they both exhaled slowly. BonBon and Cupcake passed them too but without any interest.

Just as they reached the door of the trailer and were unlocking it, Greasy went by, slowing noticeably and looking in their direction. Sarah figured he had slowed to stare at her in her Sabre suit. The smile on his clown face was huge, creepy, lubricious. She told Chuck to hurry.

They got inside. Chuck went to sit in front of the small mirror, to take off his makeup. Sarah sat down on the bed to rest for a minute.

She started to watch Chuck take off his makeup, relaxing a little as some of it came off. She was full up with clowns. _Done_. If Chuck wanted to clown again, she'd grin and bear it. But she never wanted to wade in clowns ever again.

She reached down to pull off one of her boots when she heard a sound from outside the door. She got up and saw the silhouette of a clown against the blinds of the door's window. She wheeled. "Chuck!" She saw another silhouette against the blinds of the large window near the table.

She felt lightheaded. "Chuck!" She turned.

He had slumped out of his chair and onto the floor. She could see that gas was coming in from a tube in the sunlight of the trailer. Right above where Chuck had been seated. She fell to her knees. Started to wobble. She heard the door open. BonBon stood there, banging his baseball bat against his hand. As Sarah lost consciousness, she had one final thought: _Why the hell is BonBon wearing a John Deere cap?_

}o{

When Chuck awoke, the first thing he saw was his big red shoes with white spats, tied together with a piece of rope. He was on the floor, concrete, on his side. His hands were bound behind his back. _Sarah_. He could not see her. He rolled over, mashing his hands painfully. The small room was dim. She was on the other side of it. "Sarah!"

Chuck couldn't hear anything, couldn't tell if she was breathing. "Sarah!" No answer.

And then Chuck saw someone else, closer to him, near his head. It was Reggie, Juvi. Chuck called his name. No answer. Chuck smelled rusty iron. Oh, no.

He looked closer at Juvi. His clown costume looked like it had been dyed red on one side, the side he was laying on. He was in a puddle of his own blood. Oh, God, no.

"Sarah!"

* * *

 **A/N2** Another donation to the cliffhanger jar. Tune in next time as our circus mission winds down. No hints. Stuff happens. Chapter 23, "A Shudder of Clowns". See you soon!

"…The clown must always go for the Flop. For there, in the face of his own failure, his humanity will be revealed. What is a flop? Just like it sounds: the audience doesn't laugh. It's when your idea falls flat. It's when something turns out differently than you thought it would. You believed that you could control the outcome of events; yet it's clear that you have no control..." -Bruce Turk


	23. Chapter 23: A Shudder of Clowns

**A/N1** Since we are _in media res_...I will say nothing but the necessary:

Don't own Chuck.

* * *

 **Turned Tables**

 _The Circus Days and Nights Mission_

* * *

Saturday, February 17, 2008  
Undetermined Location  
Undetermined Time

* * *

CHAPTER 23 A Shudder of Clowns

* * *

"Sarah!" Chuck cried again. No answer.

He snaked toward Juvi. "Reggie, man, please, c'mon…Reggie, are you ok?"

Reggie did not respond. Chuck was growing certain that he was dead. The pool of blood around Reggie's upper body was thick, dark, cool. Chuck knew because he was now smeared with some of it. The smell of it was all around Chuck. He felt like he might gag. He forced himself to control his breathing. In. Out. In. Out…

Chuck zigzagged stiffly to Sarah. No blood. He rolled over so that his bound hands could contact hers. Warmth. _Thank you, God!_

Relief washed over Chuck, so strong he sobbed out loud. "Sarah!" Still no answer.

Chuck, larger, heavier, had come out of the effects of the gas (that must have been what it was) first. He again forced himself to calm down, and then to focus on the room.

It was bare and small. One heavy metal door. A little sunlight filtered in through a small vent high up on one wall. Sunlight. How long had they been out? At least six or seven hours. The concrete floor and the walls—they weren't at Circus Maximus. They'd been moved.

Antonio and the clowns must have somehow figured out what was going on. But how? Jan or Liz? Maybe. But Chuck did not think so. Chuck let the question go. Right now, he needed Sarah, and they needed to escape.

He called her name again, rubbing her fingers with his. He could feel the rope that bound her hands, and the rope that bound his. He heard a low gasp from her, then felt her fingers grip his.

"Chuck?" Her voice was small, taut, disoriented.

"Yeah, Sarah. Are you ok?"

There was a pause. "Yes, as far as I can tell. Foggy, though."

"Me too."

Sarah inhaled sharply. "Chuck, I smell blood. Are you injured?" He could hear a rising note of panic.

"No, I'm ok. But Reggie's not. He's dead, I think."

Sarah's fingers let go of Chuck's and she worked herself around until she was looking at him and could see Juvi. "Damn."

She had just started to inchworm her way toward Reggie when the door scraped open. Greasy strode in. He had on his full clown regalia. He glared down at Chuck with contempt unconcealed by his clown face. His gaze then slid expectantly from Chuck to Sarah, Sarah bound in her Sabre suit. Greasy licked his lips. His smile was oily under the greasepaint. Chuck had his first insight into coulrophobia.

"I heard you wake up. Good day, Agents Carmichael and Walker. You should enjoy it. It will be your last. But it will be an eventful day for the two of you. You can see a preview there—Good ol' Juvi, clowning for the gods now, and no doubt still mediocre. A mere smattering of applause, even in the afterlife…" Greasy's face and his voice sneered. Chuck, already enraged by Greasy's look at Sarah, yelled and rolled at Greasy's clown shoes.

Greasy lightly jumped up as Chuck's clumsy roll arrived, and then he came down hard on Chuck's ribs, landing on them with his full weight. For a moment, Chuck knew nothing but pain and panic. He felt like his ribs were broken; Greasy had knocked the air out of him. He dimly heard Sarah call out his name.

When his vision began to clear and he could suck in air, all he could see was Greasy. Greasy had leaned down into Chuck's face, clown nose to nose. "Upstart. I am going to enjoy today's…festivities." While Greasy crowed over Chuck, BonBon, also in his clown getup, entered the room, his baseball bat braced on his shoulder. Chuck noticed that BonBon was wearing a John Deere cap with a rolled bill. Liz's dad's cap. _Shit._ This kept getting worse.

Chuck heard Sarah's voice, now strong and calm. "I don't know who you think we are, but we are…"

"Charles and Sarah Charles," Greasy said, ending Sarah's claim. "And, no, you aren't. You see, when Antonio's old friend, Jim, talked to us yesterday, he told us that you, Chuck, were the one who tranqed us. That got Antonio thinking. While you were performing your second act, we searched your trailer. We found spy gear and copies of Antonio's documents, and drawings of important tech—Chesko and…Sabre," Greasy bit into Sarah's stage name hungrily, "We had sent copies of your publicity photos to one of Antonio's buddies at the CIA and he ran facial IDs. Finding Charles Carmichael. Meh. But finding _Sarah Walker? The Ice Queen_? Major. The analyst wouldn't have done it if hadn't been for a snippet of surveillance tape from the CIA supermax prison. There was your face, and your name on the visitor's log. The Ring would love to have this information. Do you know how long the Ring's been interested in you?" Greasy stared at Sarah—but not her face.

"We recruited Larkin as much in hopes of getting to you as to have him in our ranks. Pity, it is not likely to work out. The Ring will be disappointed to find out, whenever Antonio decides to tell them, that we had you and did not turn you over." He turned back to face Chuck. "Still, Antonio promised me: I get to _defrost_ the Ice Queen later—and you get to watch, Chuck. It'll be messy, oh, so deliciously messy—but, be consoled, she'll enjoy her end and I'll enjoy her end, and it'll be the last thing you ever see." The threat chilled the air. Greasy left, with one long, last, lingering look at Sarah. Chuck saw her shudder when Greasy looked away.

BonBon watched Greasy go, then leaned his bat against the wall. He fished zip ties out of his pocket; he had a handful. "Now that you're awake, let's make sure you aren't going anywhere. Those ropes were just a precaution, in case you woke up sooner than expected. Now I need to secure you for real." BonBon put a zip tie on Chuck's wrists and another on his ankles, then he pulled Chuck's feet toward his hands and zip tied his bound wrists to his bound ankles. It took a minute; Chuck's long legs meant his hands were a distance from his feet. BonBon yanked on Chuck's ties, satisfying himself that they were secure, then he moved to Sarah. He bent down to do the same to Sarah.

Sarah's hands shot out, twin cobras, and she grabbed BonBon's head by the ears. Yanking his head down with both hands, she slammed her knees up into it. He went down hard. She drove her elbow into the back of his head, and his face smashed against the concrete floor with a splintering sound, the John Deere hat falling off and rolling in a half circle around them on the floor.

Sarah sat forward immediately and untied her feet. Chuck's face was slack. Sarah looked at him as she stood. "He's an idiot. Did he think I'd just wait for him to zip tie me? Good that it took so long to zip tie you, it gave me time to unknot the ropes on my hands." Her voice was intense but quiet. She smiled a quick, tight smile. "There're advantages to your being tall and lanky—at least for your partner."

She hurriedly unzipped the front of her black suit and pulled a small knife from somewhere beneath it. She cut Chuck free and as he got up, she checked Reggie's pulse. A shadow crossed her face. She shook her head. "Goddamn them! Why would anyone hurt Reggie?" She was whispering—but it felt like a cry.

Chuck felt his earlier rage replenish itself: Greasy's awful threat against Sarah; his killing harmless, bouncing Reggie. Chuck felt his hands shaking. He reached down and picked up the John Deere cap. Chuck shoved it into the pocket of his white tux jacket. He got up, groaning silently. His ribs weren't broken, not cracked even, but he ached and he was going to be sore and uncomfortable. He'd have to ignore it.

Sarah moved to the door and listened. She still had the small knife in her hands, but it was not going to be an effective weapon. Sarah turned from the door. "What's up with that hat? I noticed it last night."

Chuck returned her whisper. "It belongs to Jim—to Liz's dad. At least, I'm pretty sure. He must have told them about me—about the other night."

He looked at Sarah and she looked back at him. She shook her head and pressed her lips together. She started thinking out loud: "They'll expect to BonBon to come out of here soon. I doubt he was supposed to stay in here…" Sarah stopped, her brow clenched. "Will his stupid jacket fit you? You're about the same height." She went to BonBon's unconscious body and rolled him over. He was wearing his normal clown jacket—black with large white and pink circles. Sarah got his arms out of it, rolling him over. She held it out to Chuck. He took off his blood-stained tux jacket and slipped on BonBon's jacket. It fit him well vertically, but hung loosely horizontally.

Sarah gazed at him in assessment. "It'll do. Can you do anything about your makeup?" Chuck remembered that he'd partially removed his makeup before passing out in the trailer. He picked up the tux jacket and reached into an interior pocket. A touch-up kit; he kept it on him all the time. He heard Sarah's quick jab: "A clown compact."

Chesko's makeup was simple. A white skull cap, a large pink nose (Chuck had taken that off last night at the trailer), a generous red smile. BonBon's wasn't much more complicated, except that he had a frown and large blush circles on each cheek. Chuck did not have time to do a thorough job, but he bent down the corners of his smile and added the blush circles. He grabbed BonBon's nose and donned it. From a distance, the get-up would do. Especially with the hat. He put it on.

"Ok, good. You need to go out and get a look around." Sarah went and grabbed the bat, handing it to Chuck. "Figure out where we are. See if you can find a way for us to escape. If anyone approaches, come back in. Maybe we can take them in here." She opened the door an inch or so. Greasy had expected BonBon to lock it when he left, so Greasy had not. "No one by the door. Go ahead." She stepped back, giving Chuck's arm a squeeze as he went by. "Be careful."

Chuck stepped out of the small room, the small building. He quickly scanned the area. They were in an outbuilding on the far edge of a badly rundown, abandoned marina. A wooden walkway in questionable repair led from the outbuilding until it bisected a larger, longer wooden pier. The pier had missing planks and one section of it near its distant end was sinking into the water. Just on the other side of the pier (immediately across from the walkway) was a large building, with _Office_ painted over the door in fading letters. A small boat was moored near the building. Past the office in the other direction sat The Tank and a red Jeep. Otherwise, the marina seemed to belong only to birds and insects.

Chuck saw Cupcake walk past one of the windows of the office. Cupcake did not look toward the outbuilding. To escape, Chuck realized and Sarah would have to make it from the outbuilding to the pier, then either onto the boat or past the office and toward land, toward the parking lot.

Or they could just swim. Maybe there were keys in the boat, or in the truck or Jeep. But then Chuck saw movement in the window of the office. Jim was pushed past it, Cupcake close behind him.

Jim was still alive! Chuck feared that what had happened to Reggie—and BonBon's wearing of Jim's hat—had meant that Jim was dead. They had to save him. Chuck looked at the sun. It was early afternoon—much later than he had thought. That must be why the clowns were in costume. They would not have time to get ready for the matinee after…finishing…here. But that also meant that they couldn't stay here much longer. They would have to get back to Circus Maximus.

BonBon was down. That left Greasy and Cupcake, as far as Chuck knew. He had no idea what weapons they had—but guns seemed a safe assumption. It was unlikely they were relying on nothing but BonBon's baseball bat. He had Sarah—and the baseball bat now. Of course, Sarah alone would likely be enough if it were just a physical fight. And with him and the bat…But: guns. Chuck saw Greasy at the office window. He looked at Chuck but then quickly turned back to the inside of the office and moved away from the window.

Chuck stepped back into the outbuilding. Sarah had just finished putting some of BonBon's zip ties on BonBon. She'd improvised a gag out of one of BonBon's socks, shoved in his mouth, with one of his shoestrings holding it in place. As Chuck looked down at the clown, the fact that BonBon had only one shoe on made Chuck realize that BonBon had been wearing work boots—not his clown shoes. Chuck had on his red clown shoes with spats. Had Greasy noticed?

In a hurried whisper, Chuck gave Sarah the sitrep. She thought for a second. "We might be able to get away and come back with help, Chuck. But given Reggie's fate, I don't feel good about leaving Jim with Greasy." Sarah spit out the clown's name. "Here's what we will do. You walk to the office. Take your time. Keep your head down. Don't worry about the shoes. BonBon normally wears red ones too, right? Let's hope Cupcake and Greasy don't register the change. I'm going to slip into the water before you start walking. I will swim to the office and see if there is another entrance. If there is, I will signal you. Go inside and attack the nearest one. I'll be coming in for the other. Let's hope there are only the two. No hesitation, Chuck. If they get shots off, bad things are likely to happen." She stood on her tiptoes and kissed him, no hesitation at the moment even with his borrowed clown face. "I love you."

"I love you too."

Chuck opened the door and stepped back onto the walkway. No one was at the office window. He gestured for Sarah to come out. She did, then slipped soundlessly into the water. Chuck gave her a few seconds, then he put the baseball bat on his shoulder, pulled the John Deere cap further down, and started to the office. Sarah swam mostly underwater. He saw her come up under the pier to get a breath, and then slide back beneath the surface. His love for her and fear for her filled him, but he kept putting one clown shoe in front of the other: he couldn't give in to panic.

As he neared the office, he made himself slow down. He gave the cap another tug downward. He stopped and pretended to be looking out on the water. He heard a small plop—a stone hitting the water. The signal!

He took the final couple of steps to the office door in a rush and turned the knob with one hand while securing the bat's handle with the other. As he burst in, he saw Cupcake standing nearest to him. Greasy was farther away, standing in front of a chair to which Jim had been zip tied. Jim's face was badly bloodied and so were Greasy's hands. Chuck swung the bat like he was swinging for the fences. He crunched Cupcake's lower face and felt the thudding, sickening sink of the bat into flesh and bone. The momentum of Chuck's mighty swing lifted Cupcake from his feet and sent him slamming into the wall. He slid down it, his face bubbling and oozing blood—and teeth.

}o{

Sarah heard the front door open as she crashed through the back door. She took in the scene and saw Chuck's windup for his swing at Cupcake. Greasy was beating Jim. She saw two pistols on the counter behind Jim's chair. She couldn't let Greasy get to them. She covered the distance between herself and the clown in a blink, and then brought her foot around in a vicious kick right into Greasy's throat. He stumbled back, gurgling and gasping. Sarah pressed her advantage, landing multiple savage blows to his face and again to his throat. He sank under the pure fury of Sarah's attack, and as he settled on his knees, she brought a long, roundhouse kick violently against the side of his head. His head whiplashed to the side and he fell limply to the floor.

Chuck had dropped the bat. He pulled off BonBon's coat and was using it to wipe Jim's face free of blood. Sarah joined him, taking out her knife to cut Jim's ties. She had freed him when she heard, "Don't move."

Sarah heard Jim slur out, " _Fuuuck_ …"

Antonio was standing in the doorway to the office bathroom. He had a gun in his hand. He flicked the gun at Sarah. "Agent Walker. I told Greasy we should have killed you once we got you here. But he had to have his way—with you." He looked down at Greasy on the floor, Greasy's head angled strangely in relation to his shoulders. "I guess he got a taste of you after all. Can't say I'm sorry to be free of that pompous psychopath. The Ring stuck me with him. I've spent years placating him, controlling him. He killed Juvi without orders…just because—or maybe because he messed up a tech pickup he didn't understand, or maybe because Juvi wasn't much of a clown." Antonio stopped and seemed to be thinking about the question, but then he went on. "Cupcake, Saul, on the other hand, was a solid worker. I'm sorry you've messed him up so bad." Antonio didn't seem all that sorry.

"I owe Jim here a debt. I don't think I would've suspected you two, if Jim hadn't shown up to buy another six-pack at the convenience store next to his motel. We stopped there for gas after our visit at the rest area. We..invited Jim out here…and he…volunteered the story. Then I found out that the Ring agent I dropped the tech to was missing, as was the tech itself, and that our FBI insider was taken last afternoon. Too much for coincidence. Still, imagine my surprise when my CIA buddy confirmed that _Sarah Walker_ was in the camp. Oh, and you too, Chuck Carmichael, whoever you are. Then we found all the spy stuff in your trailer, including copies of papers of mine. Now, where is the tech?"

Chuck shrugged. "We don't have it."

Antonio frowned. "You, Chesko, I was going to keep alive…for a while; no reason to fear you like Agent Walker, as far as I can tell. And you are a damn good clown." Antonio's frown up-ended into a small grin. "Not a bad impromptu BonBon impression. Hate to waste clown talent, but I guess there's no way around it." He flicked his gaze to Sarah. "Is that your story too? You don't have it?" She nodded tightly.

Antonio pulled the trigger.

A hole appeared in Chuck's left red shoe. In the toe. Sarah jerked, sobbed once. Then she realized what had happened and immediately composed herself. But Antonio had noticed. "I thought you two were a real couple, although what, you, Sabre, could want from Chesko here stumps me. You don't seem to me even to like clowns. So where is the tech, Sabre?"

"It's in DC. Out of our hands." She glanced to Chuck, and he nodded. But she noticed his eyes drop for a split second toward the floor. He had slid his other red shoe under the bat, and was slowly moving his shoe under the thicker part of the bat. She touched her gaze to Chuck's, and then looked back to Antonio. "You can do what you want to us, I suppose. But you are done at the circus, Antonio. Life on the run looks like your future. And if you kill us, you'd better be prepared to run fast and into the far distance…"

At the mention of the circus, Antonio's frown had returned. Jim spoke suddenly. "Can somebuddy explain somma this t' me? I'm gawddam lost…" Antonio shifted his focus to Jim. Sarah saw Chuck toss the bat into midair in front of her with his foot. She caught the handle in one smooth movement and spun around, a complete circle. Antonio froze among targets for an instant, long enough, and Sarah let go of the bat like a hammer in an Olympic hammer throw. The thick end of the bat blasted Antonio in the forehead and he went down in a lumpy pile. His gun went off as he crumpled. Sarah wheeled to Chuck only to see him wheeling toward her. Then she heard Jim groan. She looked at Jim. Blood from his abdomen was soaking through his shirt.

 _Shit_.

}o{

The three of them were in the Jeep, tearing up the dirt road from the abandoned marina. Chuck was in the backseat, keeping pressure on Jim's wound and trying to keep Jim calm and still. Sarah was driving.

While Chuck had gotten Jim to the Jeep, Sarah had used the last of Bonbon's zip ties on Cupcake and Antonio. Greasy was dead. Sarah's kick broke his neck. In the rear of the Jeep was a box with Chuck and Sarah's weapons and gear, and papers, as well as their cell phones—everything the clowns had found when they had searched the trailer.

Chuck told Sarah how to get to the hospital. He had looked at a map of the area before the mission started. Jim passed out about halfway to the hospital. Sarah increased her speed. She rocketed into the Emergency entrance and stopped the car. A nurse came out and Sarah told her they were law enforcement agents Chuck scooted Jim toward the door. The nurse glanced at Sarah's face and the blood on Jim and she turned and ran inside. A moment later, a team with a stretcher came out and carefully put Jim on it, then pushed it quickly through the doors and down the hallway. Sarah sent Chuck in to keep track of what was going on and to call Liz. She moved the Jeep to the distant visitors parking lot. A few minutes later she rejoined Chuck.

He was sitting in the corner of the waiting room. He'd washed the makeup from his face. There was still blood on the side of his pants, Reggie's blood, and all over the front of his shirt, Jim's blood. Chuck's eyes looked hollow. She was sure hers must too. She could hardly remember ever being so tired. She'd crashed almost simultaneously with shutting off the Jeep's engine. She saw that Chuck's phone was in his hand. She looked the question at him and he nodded. "I got her. She and Jan will be here as fast as they can."

"Have you heard anything about Jim's condition?"

He shook his head slowly as he spoke. "Not much. A nurse came out to say he was going straight into emergency surgery. It'll likely be a while before we hear anything more."

"Do you want to call your mom, or for me to? We need a team to get to the marina, collect Antonio and Cupcake and BonBon, and…take the bodies—Reggie and Greasy." The weariness in Chuck's eyes made Sarah feel her own more acutely.

He stood up, an act of will. "I'll call her. She's called a bunch of times since last night. And I need to talk to her anyway." He went back out the main doors.

}o{

"Chuck! Chuck!" His mom— _his mom, Frost_ —was shouting into the phone. Afraid.

"Yeah, Mom, it's me."

"Oh, thank God. I've been calling and calling. And Sarah?"

"She's here too."

"Where is _here_?"

"Um, the hospital in Savannah."

"What?!"

"Long story. I will tell it in a minute, but first things first." Chuck made his voice steady, hoping to steady his mom. Strange role-reversal, that. "We need you to get a team to an abandoned marina…" He gave Frost directions. He then told her what had happened.

When he finished, she was no longer shouting, but her voice trembled. "Ok, hold on." She put him on hold for a couple of minutes, then she was back. "Bear in mind that the hospital will report the gunshot victim. I imagine local law enforcement will be along soon. Tell them you are NSA and have them call this number," she read it to Chuck, "they'll end up talking to General Beckman. She owes me a favor. Answer the law enforcement officer's questions as truthfully as you can while not revealing anything about yourselves or the Ring. Beckman will shut down any overeager curiosity.

"A team will be at the marina later today. Local law enforcement will secure the scene and prisoners until the team arrives. I'll dispatch another team to the circus to claim Antonio's computers and papers and anything they can find in the clowns' quarters. I'm hopeful that Antonio will be able to give us important information when he is interrogated. Speaking of which, we now have a much better idea about the Ring tech and the plans for it. But that will keep until you two are back in DC. I have a mission for you, but I am still working out the advance arrangements…You'll need to leave soon."

"Ok, ok. But before you go, and speaking of missions," Chuck had to ask this, "what were you suggesting when you told Sarah to 'play along' with Graham's solo missions? Were you seriously suggesting she should go on those missions, Mom? We are trying to get out of this life, not get lodged ever more deeply in it! You do understand that, don't you?" The questions tumbled out, giving his mom no chance to answer. But he made himself stop, finally.

He heard his mom blow out a long breath. "It doesn't matter what I meant, Chuck. Graham is missing. No one has seen him since late yesterday morning. He left Langley in his own car. The car was found abandoned around 8 pm last night. This morning, I made a move. I asked for you and Sarah to be assigned to me…to my team."

Chuck was struggling to take this in. Graham missing? His mom's _team_? "What team, Mom? You don't have a team."

"Yes, Chuck, I do. It is my primary assignment. I will explain it to you and to Sarah when you get here. You are officially on the team as of a couple of hours ago. The CIA can't take you from me. I will explain it all soon. Tickets will be waiting for you at the Savannah/Hilton Head airport. I will text your flight numbers and times." His mom was back in her normal clipped, efficient voice. She was now officially his boss as well as his mom. Well, maybe she'd be better at the former than she had the latter.

"Ok, Mom. We will want to stay around to see about our friend, and then we will have to gather up our things at the trailer, get cleaned up."

"That's fine, son. I will set up a flight for after dinner. Someone will be waiting for you at the airport in DC. I will see that someone collects the circus trailer and your belongings and equipment in the next couple of days. I hope your friend makes it. Talk to you soon." She hung up.

Chuck stood still for a moment, looking at the deep blue Georgia sky. Graham…missing. His mom's…team. Truth really did manage to be stranger than fiction.

A police car pulled in to the emergency lane. Chuck waved to them and went to talk with them. The officers weren't happy with his story and they radioed headquarters, but when their chief got on the radio a few minutes later and told them the situation was under control, they got back in the patrol car and left.

He went inside to tell Sarah what his mom had told him.

}o{

After Chuck told her about the phone call, Sarah got up and walked around the waiting area.

The news about Graham struck her strangely. She was not sad, not worried about him. But he had been a fixture in her life for so long, really since before her adult life had started. She'd understood herself in relation to him. He was a little like Giorgi in the Cristiani's trapeze act—her life turned on him like an axle. Or it had until Budapest, when she had begun to suspect that her life was hers to decide, and not Graham's. Then she'd been sent to Burbank, and Chuck turned that suspicion into certainty. Her life was hers. Chuck had no interest in taking Graham's place in her life. He wanted to share her life with her, not to decide her life for her. And she had decided that what she wanted was to share her life with him.

Still, for Graham to go missing was a little like a landmark going missing, a skyscraper or a mountain or a giant tree that had loomed over her landscape for years and years and was suddenly gone. The point of orientation Graham had been was now gone—but so too was the long, cold shadow he had cast over her life.

}o{

She had no more time to think about the news—Liz and Jan burst into the waiting room, both upset, Liz in tears. Liz ran to Sarah and grabbed her, hugging her hard. Sarah felt lost for a second, then suddenly found. She wrapped her arms around Liz and hugged her back, whispering that it was going to be ok. Chuck and Jan hugged, and then the hugs switched off.

"Have you heard anything else?" Liz asked, eagerness and dread fighting in the sound of her voice. Jan reached out and took Liz's hand.

Chuck answered, "No, nothing yet. But it's early still. He's tough, Liz, I know that already."

Liz turned her head into Jan's shoulder and began to sob. Jan stroked the back of her head and spoke softly. "S'ok, Liz, s'ok. He _is_ tough. A game old bantam rooster, that dad of yours."

"So, what happened? You said Dad got shot?" Liz's eyes searched Chuck's.

"Yeah, he did. Accidentally, although he was hurt already, before the shot." Chuck motioned for Liz and Jan to sit down in one corner of the sterile gray-on-gray waiting room, and in hushed tones, he told them most of what had happened, He left out the specific 'law enforcement' agency he and Sarah worked for (the words 'agent' and 'spy' were never mentioned) and he left out the details of Greasy's threat against Sarah. He never mentioned the Ring. But otherwise, he told her what had happened. They both cried for Reggie, as did Chuck and Sarah.

When he finished, after everyone had recovered some, Liz stared at Chuck and then down at his clown shoe, the hole in it clearly visible. "I'm so glad you two are ok. Thank you for rescuing my dad—again."

The doctor came into the waiting room and found them. She started to speak to Chuck, but he told her that Liz was the patient's daughter, and he stepped aside. "Your dad is tough. He lost a lot of blood and he is weak. But he is ok. The bullet didn't do too much damage to any vital organs. We got the bullet out and cleaned things up. I'm optimistic that he will be ok, although it will take a while—and although he is not completely out of the woods yet." Liz lit up. She grabbed the doctor and hugged her. The doctor looked embarrassed, but when all three of Chuck, Sarah and Jan shrugged at her at the same time, she relaxed into the hug and hugged Liz back.

The doctor told Liz she could go in for a few minutes to see her father, although he was unlikely to be awake. Liz followed her out of the waiting room. Jan watched her go, then, sighing, she turned to Sarah and Chuck. "So Liz told me that you two aren't really newlyweds. Is that right?" Sarah nodded ruefully, as did Chuck. "Well, just let me say this: no one has ever pretended to be newlyweds better than you two. In fact, you pretended so well, you should ask yourselves whether it really counts as pretending." She winked at them and they both blushed. "Send us an invitation when you decide to make the paperwork reflect the reality." Then she changed topics, turning to Chuck. "How should we act when we go back to the circus?"

"Just act like you don't know anything and like whatever news comes is news to you. I now think that the rest of the Cristiani's are innocent. My guess is that the owner will have Maria step into Antonio's role, if she is willing. Be patient, I think the circus will continue. You may miss the other couple of performances planned for Savannah, though."

"Well," Jan said, "that'd probably be just as well. Liz will want to be with her dad and I will want to be with them both—even if the old codger makes me a little crazy."

Chuck went over to the chair he had been sitting on in the corner and grabbed the John Deere cap. He'd pushed it under the chair before he went out to talk to his mom. He handed it to Jan. She smiled at him and kissed his cheek. Sarah hugged her. They said their goodbyes, and Chuck and Sarah went out to the Jeep.

They drove to the Circus Maximus camp. The trailer was a mess but each got a quick shower. Sarah checked Chuck's ribs. They were sore, and would be sorer tomorrow—but they were clearly not broken. They packed two small bags.

As they left the trailer, Chuck glanced one last time toward the Big Top.

They drove to the airport and sent Frost a photo of the Jeep and the number of the row where it was parked, so that it could be picked up, and then they went inside.

Their time at the circus was at an end.

* * *

 **A/N2** Whew!

And that's all, folks—at least for Circus Maximus. Lots of balls in the air, lots to be done in our final two missions. Next, an interlude—but not a pause. We are ramping into the new mission Frost mentioned. Tune in next time for important events. Chapter 24, "Twelve Thousand Years". Hope to see you then!

If you've been reading but not reviewing, how about dropping me a line, just to check in? Thanks!


	24. Chapter 24: Twelve Thousand Years

**A/N1** An interlude, but, as I warned, not exactly a pause. Actually, a pivotal chapter. Thanks so much for all the reviews of the last chapter—and the PMs. I love hearing from folks. Readers systematically underestimate how much writers enjoy reviews, even brief ones (I know this because I've been on both sides). Without them, writing is a very solitary business. As I like to say, _reading is free but the suggested donation is a review_.

Don't own Chuck or _Mad Magazine_.

* * *

 **Turned Tables**

 _Interlude (Part One)_

* * *

Saturday, February 17, 2008  
On a Flight, Savannah to DC

* * *

CHAPTER 24 Twelve Thousand Years

* * *

As Chuck slid into his plane seat beside Sarah, he noticed his own shoes.

He'd put on his Chucks. It'd been them or his black spy shoes, and he had not wanted to wear those. But the Chucks looked odd to him. Maybe that was because he had gotten used to his clown shoes. They'd been completely ridiculous, of course, but wearing them had made him happy. Until Antonio shot one of them.

Chuck shook his head slightly and sighed as he levered himself into the always too-small space of plane seats. His knees would be pressed against the seat in front of him for the rest of the flight. His ribs were tender too. It was going to be an uncomfortable flight. He glanced toward Sarah, worried all at once that she heard his sigh. It'd been a long, hard few days. He did not want to add to her burdens.

The battle at the marina had left them both shaken—and then the stress of Liz's dad's injury and surgery, the leave-taking from their friends and from the circus itself: it had all added up. He and Sarah had sat in the airport, waiting to board, in near exhaustion. They were too tired to eat. Sarah had fallen asleep with her head on his shoulder. He had dozed too, in and out, trying to keep track of the boarding call.

At one point, he had found himself staring again at the cover bridal set on her finger and the matching ring on his own. Neither had thought to take the rings off. Of course, they were traveling as the Charleses, so it made sense to leave them on. But Chuck knew that had almost nothing to do with his reluctance.

Jan's parting comment to them had reached his heart. He wanted to ask Sarah to marry him. They'd been together—dating, in some sense or in some fashion—for months. And during that time, they'd spent far more time together than normal dating couples. She lived with him now, was dating him exclusively. She'd said she wanted everything between them to be real. She said that knowing he'd been thinking about their cover wedding rings.

He wanted to ask. He felt like she wanted him to ask. But he felt reluctant.

Sarah had said they needed to figure out how to settle issues with Graham and the Ring, or they'd end up having the spy life follow them home. She was right. If he asked her to marry him while they were still in the life, would it somehow taint the proposal, the marriage? Chuck had come to one certainty about the spy life. _It eventually claimed everything_. Even if you tried to find something, some item or symbol or piece of yourself to hide away from it, its darkness kept creeping until that thing you thought you had hidden away became darkened too. He twisted his lips as he thought of the bullet hole in his clown shoe.

And now he was on a new team, his mom's team, a team he did not know existed until a few hours ago. More secrets, probably more lies. He was about to go on another mission. What end to it could there be? What had his mom implied on the phone earlier—that he wrongly believed he could exit the spy life on his own terms? Maybe he couldn't. Maybe they couldn't. Maybe he'd been wrong all this time.

He'd thought the problem was for Sarah to exit the spy life, but maybe the real problem was for them to exit it together. Could they exit it as a real couple, after all the fakery, all the lying and pretending and evasions, could they be real—not just Sarah, but him, and them, together?

He thought of Sarah as having been a spy for much longer than he had, and that was true. Except that Chuck's life had been spy-ridden from the very beginning: he'd been given life by a spy, nurtured (a little, at least) by a spy. It was like he'd taken in the spy life, taking in deceit, with his mother's milk. What in his life had ever been real? He'd thought a lot was. But, really, was that true? Ellie. She was real—even if she was an occasional spy. Martin. He was real. Even if he was a CIA analyst. But what else? His dad? Who knew if he was even still alive?

Sarah reached over and took his hand. He looked at her, into her eyes. Sarah was real. Her heart was real. Chuck castigated himself. He needed to have faith, agile and regenerating faith. That was his thing. He couldn't let the aftermath of the marina make him despair. _Sarah_. Sarah and Chuck. They could find a way out, him, her, together, for real.

}o{

Sarah's nap in the airport had been rent by a sudden nightmare. Clowns. Greasy. The feeling of his neck snapping when she had kicked him. She killed…intimately…like that only a few times. Usually, she was at a distance from the person she killed. Looking through a scope. Administering a poison. It was not often that she—her own body—was the lethal instrument. She glanced peripherally at Chuck. She knew he was struggling with it all, the marina, too.

After she'd taken her seat on the plane and gathered herself, Sarah decided they needed to talk.

"Chuck," she asked in a gentle whisper, "today, the marina, that was bad. I mean, we had no real choice, but…but it has upset me too. Greasy. I…I mean…" She held Chuck's eyes.

"I know, Sarah," Chuck replied, looking down at their hands as he took hers in his. "I can't stop feeling the baseball bat bite into Cupcake's jaw…It's easy to forget how…breakable…everyone is. Good guys and bad." She nodded and saw that he understood that she was having a similar trouble.

Chuck looked away for a moment, thinking. "Grammar misleads us, you know?"

Sarah wasn't sure she understood. "No, not exactly. What do you mean?"

"Just that grammar makes it the case that the violence you do—the verb—seems done only to the 'victim'—the direct object of the verb. 'Chuck hit Cupcake.' But the subject in this sort of case is also a _kind_ of direct object. The violence done rebounds on the doer of it. The violence you do is always done to you too. Maybe it doesn't take the same physical or psychological form, but you suffer too." Chuck paused and swallowed.

"There's something that happened in Romney that I didn't tell you, Sarah. I had Coombs in the truck and I was trying to get him to tell me where you were, where Lawton took you. I…" Chuck paused long enough to say this without a shaking voice, "I threatened to torture him—to shot him in the knees, to cut off his fingers, starting with his thumbs, if he didn't tell me. I terrified him into talking. Parks took him into the abandoned church and I vomited outside, under that old sign."

He stopped to let Sarah speak, but she only looked at him with damp eyes. "I should've told you this when you told me about your first trip to the CIA supermax prison...I didn't do it to Coombs, Sarah, but I am almost sure that I would have done it, could have done it, anyway."

She reversed their hands, hers now holding his. She leaned against him and kissed him. "Chuck, thank you for loving me so much. I hardly know how to process it. What that must have cost you…Let's get out of this life. Let's find a place in the sun where we can love and learn and live together. And help each other heal. Live at high noon instead of at midnight.

"Whatever Frost has planned for us—we won't do it unless we can see light at the end of this tunnel. Agreed?"

Chuck nodded, but then he frowned. "How will we know the light is not an oncoming train? You know, like in the cartoons."

"Have a little faith, Chuck. I do. I think you are rubbing off on me." She smirked as she said the last bit, and Chuck reacted by blushing. They were quiet for a moment.

He leaned against her. "I need to make love to you. I just want to be in _our_ bed together, to make all this go away—forget this life—for a few hours."

She kissed his cheek and pulled back, her eyes dancing. "Well, when you ask so nicely, what's a girl to say...?"

}o{

There was a driver waiting for them when they got to the airport. She drove them to their apartment. Chuck got their suitcases in the door and he took his shoes off, as did Sarah. They got ready for bed. Chuck wanted to make love; he knew Sarah did too.

But although the spirit was willing, the flesh was unable. Their exhaustion, the satisfaction of being home, the size and comfort of their bed after the small one in the trailer…Chuck closed his eyes. He drifted into a warm, comfortable sleep with Sarah wrapped around him. They'd welcome each other home in the morning.

}o{

Chuck had just reappeared from under the covers, having finished Sarah's welcome home, when Sarah's phone rang. She sighed and her body shook, toe to head—a final aftershock. When it passed, she picked the phone up. She intended to refuse the call, but then she saw that it was Frost.

"Hey, Mary," Sarah said, blushing as Chuck nuzzled her neck, thinking about what they'd just been doing and the oddity of talking to Chuck's mother in the afterglow.

"Hi, Sarah. I'm so glad you guys are back safe…Your driver reported to me last night. She'll also be the one who picks you up today. How soon can you two be ready? We have…a lot to talk about." Frost's voice had gone from warm and excited to cold and clipped in just a few seconds. Sarah knew that rapid switch—she had done it to Chuck time after time in Burbank, when she was fighting being compromised by him. Frost was both committed to and hoping to avoid the coming conversation—what did that mean?

"We can be ready," Sarah paused looking at Chuck, "in an hour." Chuck nodded his agreement.

"Good. The driver is already in town. Expect to be with me for a while. I'll take care of lunch for…everybody." Frost was gone, the connection broken.

"An hour?" Chuck said, grinning. "Enough time for an instant replay?" He grimaced a bit, his sore ribs rebelling against his demands on them.

Sarah gently rubbed his chest. "No, but I promise you that later, if possible, we'll enjoy a slow-motion, live-action replay from a variety of angles…comfortable for you."

Chuck's eyes glassed over for a second, and Sarah laughed again as she got out of bed. As she turned on the shower, she looked back into the bedroom at Chuck.

The upsurge of love for him stole her breath. How had she gotten so lucky? She heard a voice in her head, her own voice from her past, the voice of the Ice Queen, deep in her Fortress of Solitude: "What the spy gods give, the spy gods take away..."

Sarah squeezed her eyes shut to quiet the voice, and she stepped into the heated spray of water. "No," she answered her past self, "no, he's my Chuck. I am not giving him up." The warm water drove away the momentary chill.

}o{

The driver knocked on the door and Chuck and Sarah walked out into the cold February day. It was sunny, bright, but windy, so that the sun made little difference in warmth, although it did brighten the prospect.

February DC was not an attractive place. The trees, other than the pines, were all bare and looked as if this winter would be their last. Old snow, plowed into piles, turned ashen as time, salt and cinders blended with it. On the sidewalks, the few pedestrians looked like they were beaten, marking time until the cold claimed them too.

Chuck made himself turn away from the window. He and Sarah chatted amiably with the driver—they'd met her last night and were feeling at ease with her today. She was in her mid to late forties. Carly was her name. She'd been working with Frost for a while—and would be no clearer about things than that. The car eventually left the confines of the city and headed out, through the suburbs, out into the countryside. Chuck began to wonder exactly where they were going.

Carly turned the car into a state park. They drove down a long road, to a small building manned by a park service employee. Carly came to a stop at the window on the side of the building. "Carly here for Frost. I have Special Agents Carmichael and Walker with me."

The man at the window bent down, so that he could see Chuck and Sarah in the rear seat. He seemed less concerned to identify them than to just see them. His eyes were full of curiosity. Carly chortled, "Alright, Sam, you've seen them." Sam's slightly star-struck gaze instantly became professional, and he nodded.

"Right, Carly, right. You're cleared to enter. They're waiting for you." Sam turned and punched some keys on a keyboard. Carly eased the car forward. "We'll be there soon."

"Where's _there_?" Chuck leaned toward Carly.

"Where we're going."

He turned to Sarah. "See, and you told me that no woman in my life giving me a straight answer was all in my head, didn't you?"

Sarah looked at him, her blue eyes made bluer by her innocent expression. "Is that what I said?"

Chuck closed his eyes, shook his head and sighed. He heard Carly join in Sarah's soft chuckle.

Carly drove them deeper into the park, past picnic areas and trailheads. Eventually, she turned into a very narrow lane, marked simply _Service: Park Personnel Only_. Some distance down the road, not far, but far enough not to be easily visible from the road, a fence closed off the lane. But as they neared it, it swung open. Chuck and Sarah both looked back to see it swing closed behind them. A high fence ran off in both directions, it too was obscured to vision from the road.

The narrow lane went on and on, much farther than Chuck anticipated. He noticed a couple of cameras mounted on trees and was sure he must have missed others. There were small, camouflaged boxes at intervals along the side of the lane. He realized that this was a highly secured area. Just as they were about to get to a clearing, Carly stopped the car again. Chuck could not see why she had stopped. She reached up and turned on the radio, tuned it to 89.1, and waited.

A deep male voice, slow-spoken and richly cultured, began: "Welcome to 89.1 AM, Washington's favorite Public Broadcasting Station. Please stand by—we are conducting a test of our emergency broadcasting system. This is a test. This is only a test." The car was filled with a high-pitched, static-filled whine. It seemed to Chuck to last several seconds longer than usual.

When it ended, the male voice on the radio resumed. "Welcome back, Carly. Missed you last night. I trust you look as comely as always in your uniform."

Carly dipped her head. "Norman, I have people with me. Keep the flirting to a minimum." Her words were annoyed but her tone was pleased.

"Oh, yes, Carly, I know. And you may now move forward, the scan is complete."

Carly nodded, as if she expected Norman to see her do so. "Alright, you golden-tongued devil…"

"Carly, don't make our newest friends privy to our innermost secrets, please…"

Carly looked at Chuck and Sarah by looking in the rearview mirror. She blushed. Chuck looked at Sarah and they both thought about earlier in the morning, at their apartment, and they both blushed in return.

Carly drove on for a moment and then parked the car. She parked it under heavy netting designed to obscure anything beneath it. The parking lot was small and made of heavy gravel. On its edge, there was a large concrete rectangle, a building of sorts, with a door off to the side. Otherwise, there was nothing to see. No other cars. Carly got out. Sarah got out on her side and then Chuck opened the door on his side and got out too. Sarah was gazing around, deeply puzzled. Chuck knew he had the same look.

"I've been authorized to share some information with you now. We are about to enter a facility that was first built as a bomb shelter in the early days of the Cold War. It was abandoned for many years after that, until the CIA began to use it. It was used for a variety of purposes, most better left unstated. It was supposed to have been filled and closed, and it is listed in the official logs that way. But it has been put to another use, as you will see." She said all this as she opened the trunk and took out a couple of grocery bags and walked across the parking lot. She put the bags down, then pressed her hand to a scanner by the door. Chuck could see multiple cameras trained on the door, some on the building, some on the heavy poles holding up the netting, some on trees nearby. The number of them made would make it hard to blind those below ground, unless the system itself could be attacked.

A low metallic sound came from the door. Carly put her other hand on the scanner and the door cracked opened. She pulled it open and gestured for Chuck and Sarah to go inside. She grabbed the bags. Inside, there was nothing but an elevator door several feet from the outer door. Chuck started to press the call button, but Carly stopped him.

"Don't Chuck. You are not yet in the system. You wouldn't like the result." Carly handed him one of her bags and she pushed the button. The doors slid open. The panel in the elevator had only one button on it, and Carly pressed it after Chuck and Sarah had stepped in. The elevator began to go down.

Carly gestured at the grocery bags. "Lunch. Frost—um, Mary—had me get it before picking you two up. Be glad. Normally we cook out of the stores down here. Ok, but not much variation. We normally never have visitors, but when we do, it often means topside food." She smiled, clearly looking forward to lunch. Norman and I will do the prep while you two talk to Mary."

"Oh, so the radio guy is down here?" Chuck asked.

"Yes, the 'radio guy' is my husband. We live here."

Chuck shot Sarah a look and she gave him a baffled glance in response. Carly saw the exchange.

"You two are now in the best-kept intelligence secret in the US." As Carly finished her comment, the elevator doors opened, and Frost stood facing them, in the middle of a large room. Around her on all three sides were massive computers, and one monitor after another. The wall behind her was divided by a hallway in its middle, but Chuck could not tell where it went or how far. The light from the main room did not allow him to see. There was a door in each other the other two walls, right and left.

They stepped out of the elevator. "Welcome, Chuck. Welcome, Sarah. Welcome to Castle." Frost stepped forward to give each of them a quick, stiff hug. "Carly, go ahead and see to your duties, then please start preparing lunch." Frost turned. A large wooden table stood in the center of the room, with comfortable chairs around it. "Would you two have a seat for a minute, please?"

Chuck and Sarah sat down. Both looked at Frost, waiting. She sat down across from them, then stood up again. She walked over to one of the monitors as if she were considering the information displayed on it, then she turned back to them. She closed her eyes for a moment, then she sat down.

"Chuck, Sarah. What I am going to tell you is sensitive, dangerous information. If certain people knew that you had this information, they would stop at nothing to get it from you. I am going to tell you only because I believe we can and must stop the Ring. I need you two to help me do that. I only ask that you both—you both—be patient and let me tell you all of what I need to tell you before you react."

Chuck thought that sounded ominous, but what choice did they have? They were already in the facility, so—in for a dime, in for a dollar. He noticed that Sarah was waiting for him to answer. She nodded her head at him; it was ok with her. "Alright, Mom. We will be patient."

Frost closed her eyes again. Then she stood up, determined, her lips set in a thin line. "Follow me."

She started down the dark hallway. A light came on as she got a step or two into it. On the far end were three doors, one on each side and one at the very end of the hallway. Frost stopped before the one at the end of the hallway. She turned to Chuck. She started to say something, then decided against it. She opened the door and let Chuck and Sarah go in before she did.

In front of them was a medium-sized table. One side of it was against the far wall. A chair was pushed under each other the other three sides. But Chuck's eyes were pulled to the two-way mirror above the table. On the other side of the mirror was a room exactly like Chuck's dad's basement lab, exactly like it was just before his father disappeared, exactly like it Chuck remembered it from his boyhood.

Stephen Carmichael was sitting in a chair in the center of the room—older, thinner, gray, but unmistakable. At first, Chuck thought his dad was staring at him. No. Then Chuck thought his dad was staring at the mirror. No. Then Chuck realized: his dad was staring into space, staring at nothing. Nothing.

"Dad?"

}o{

Chuck whirled around, only to be met with another shocking sight. His mother was gazing at him, weeping. He'd whirled around vaguely planning to scream at her, to demand an answer, to hurl a curse. But the sight of her, her entire body beginning to rack with sobs, undid him, undid his plans. He felt Sarah's warm hand take his and squeeze it. "Chuck, your mom needs you."

Those foreign words—when had Frost, his mom, ever needed him, ever needed anyone?—pushed him forward and he crossed the distance to his mother, took her in his arms. She began to weep in earnest, a mixture of misery and relief. His mom had her arms around his neck, holding on as if for dear life, and her tears were dampening his shoulder. He stood like that with her for a long while. Finally, she pushed him away, wiped her eyes on the back of her hand, and made herself face him.

"Stephen has been here since shortly after he went missing. He is," she looked past Chuck and at her staring husband, his father, "…unwell. And it is my fault."

She stepped around Chuck and pulled out a chair. She gestured, and Sarah and Chuck each took one. Chuck continued to fight down his urge to scream at his mom. Sarah's eyes, soft and pleading, kept him under control.

Frost began simply. "Your father had a psychotic break. It was my fault. His doctor is here today; I will let you talk to the doctor to get the medical details. But I owe you a story because I am sure you now hate me, or will when I tell you the story."

Frost wiped her eyes again, took a deep breath and went on. "Your photographic memory, Chuck, is an inheritance from your father. Like you, he did not try to draw attention to his gift. He just had it.

"I learned of it while we were dating, and it was then mostly a funny quirk of the man I loved. He could do odd and endearing things, like remember what I had worn on any date we ever had, head to toe, colors, fabric, etc." She paused for a moment and smiled weakly at Sarah. "Has Chuck made you aware that he can do this?"

Sarah smiled back at Frost. "Well, he did talk to me about…an outfit of mine being his mental screen saver. And he did once, quite a while ago, mention a blue blouse of mine with little buttons…"

Frost looked from Sarah to Chuck. "My guess, Sarah, is that he can tell you what you were wearing anytime he saw you." Sarah turned to Chuck and he looked away.

"Oh," she said, "I never really thought about all he could remember, not that way, I guess."

"Well," Frost's tone darkened, "one night I brought a file home with me—a file for a mission I was about to go on. Normally, your father never asked about missions and I never told him. I don't mean that he was wholly ignorant of the kind of work I did, or that he was at ease with it, but I made it clear to him that I was not going to give it up no matter what. He knew that when he married me. We both thought he could handle it—and he did, for a while, handle it, that is. The knowing but not knowing.

"But that night I made a mistake and left the file out. His curiosity got the best of him and he looked at it. I caught him with it. At first, I was furious; he was hurt. Why didn't I trust him? I told him that I did, but that my superiors didn't. I could lose my job if anyone knew he'd seen the file. I accused him of not trusting me. We went on like that for a while before we both lost steam. We just stood there, glaring at each other.

"And then he asked me if I realized that my target had been involved in a relationship with my asset—and that the whole mission was likely a trap? I was flabbergasted. I told him our analysts had been all over the question and that they saw no connection. He opened the file and pointed to various things in the history of the target and the asset. A pattern emerged—but a delicate one, hard to see, subtle.

"I realized that your father did not only have a remarkable memory, he had a remarkable mind. He was a genius at that sort of analysis. He'd put together things no one else would have imagined connecting. And he turned out to be right. I…completed the mission and…reversed the trap that had been planned for me.

"I started sharing all my missions with your father. He became my mission _de facto_ analyst. As he got more and more of my missions into his head, he saw more and more connections, ways in which people or events of previous missions were related to ones in new missions. It was like he could hold the entire spy world in his head.

"But I should have seen what it was costing him. He hid how frightened for me he was. How saddened he was by my secrets. He kept me from knowing how disturbed he was by my job. He had never had to face it in anything but the abstract. But now he was almost daily facing what I did. I should have seen that in his desire to keep me safe, he was pushing himself too hard, was allowing himself to be hurt." Frost began to cry again but she went on. "But I didn't see any of that. Instead, I now understand, I saw myself as an agent with the most amazing asset anyone had ever had. I started thinking about what he could do if he had not just my missions in his head, but the missions of many agents.

"I knew not to trust the CIA. I needed someone who would understand what Stephen could do and who could make any and all US intelligence data available to him. So, one day I slipped into the car of the Chairman of the oversight committee and I explained…what I had, what my analyst/asset could do. He visited Stephen secretly and he agreed that Stephen would be a remarkable aid to US intelligence. And so, he started sending us as much current data as he could. Stephen would do his work at UCLA, spend time with you and Ellie, put you to bed, and then he'd go to the basement with me and I would fill his head—and he would find patterns.

"I was blind to so much, Chuck. We were making a difference. Increasing the greater good—at least that was my excuse. But it was overtaxing even your father's gifts. He started self-medicating. It got worse—mostly amphetamines but in larger and larger doses. I didn't notice. God, I didn't notice!

"But then he ran across a file about the CIA's horrid LSD testing, the MK-Ultra experiments, the attempts at mind control. He somehow found someone to buy LSD from and started experimenting on himself, to see if he could stretch his own limits, 'throw open the doors to perception', as he once put it to me later.

"It worked for a while—until it didn't. You know the result. The blank periods. The day he wandered off looking for syrup…" She choked up. "I found him that night and put him in a CIA safe house until I could put him somewhere…more permanent. I hoped his condition could be reversed.

"The best doctors were brought in, but nothing helped. The strange thing was that he would regularly become 'lucid', but that he was trapped in the time around when he left. He wanted to see me and to do analysis. He still could do it, better even than before. But he seemed to believe that he was working on hypothetical files—the changing dates and world situation he took to be just part of a game he was playing, working on possible future missions, possible future emergencies. He somehow never noticed that I was aging. But he was helping us. He has done so much good." She gazed through the mirror at Stephen, and the fact that she was still in love with him was unmistakable.

She wiped her eyes yet again. Sarah got up and stopped by Mary's chair. She put her hand on Mary's shoulder and Mary turned her face up and smiled at Sarah. Then Sarah went and picked up her chair and carried it around the table to put it beside Chuck's. He was sitting, staring through the mirror at his father. He felt her hand on his leg, reassuring him, comforting him.

Sarah's actions gave Mary time to re-focus. "The doctors believed that seeing his children would break him, destroy his delusions, and take even his 'lucid' periods from him, from us. Because, you see, during those periods, he and I are not just doing analysis—we are husband and wife." She waited, making sure the implication was clear. "I live here with him part of the time. He still loves me. And he loves you, Chuck, and Ellie. But the doctors think I am 'internal' to his delusion, so seeing me will not bring on a final psychotic break—but you and Ellie, the degree to which you have changed since he left the house that night, you two are 'external' to the delusion. And since I knew it would kill you to see your father like this but to be unable to interact with him, I have kept this from you for all these years.

She fell silent, then continued in a whisper: "And because I couldn't bear for you to see what I did to the man I love…"

Chuck had listened. Tried to be patient. But his anger and frustration and sadness overcame him, overcame even Sarah's steadying hand.

He matched his mom's whisper: "You know, Mom, I knew you were a bad mom, even before Dad vanished. I suspected you loved your work more than you loved us. But," his voice began to rise in loudness, in intensity, "but I had no idea what a colossal bitch you really are!" Mary flinched, but she let him go on, made herself look at him. "You did this to him. He would have done _anything_ for you. And you made your own husband your asset. And you pushed him until you broke him, and even broken, you keep pushing."

Chuck covered his face with his trembling hands, trying to wipe the rage from his eyes. He was having a hard time seeing straight. He knew he was yelling; he couldn't prevent it. "How could you…How could you keep him from me, from us, keep us from him? All this time, thinking he had abandoned us, or that he had just wandered away, and that God knows what happened? Why the hell do you believe these doctors, why the hell can't I just go in there and see my dad?"

Just then, the door to the room opened, and Ellie walked in. "Because, Chuck," she said as she walked to Frost and stood behind her, "I am the lead doctor and I forbid it."

Chuck jumped up. Sarah nearly fell out of her chair.

}o{

A long quiet settled on the room. Chuck gaped at Ellie as she stood behind their mom. Ellie had on a white lab coat and had her reading glasses pushed up on her head. Her face was stern but her eyes were sympathetic, misty.

She took advantage of the quiet to say hello to Sarah. Sarah just nodded, looking from Ellie to Chuck, unable to figure out how to fit into this bizarre family drama.

Ellie walked over to Sarah. "Sarah, mom and I wanted you here because we knew Chuck would need you, and because we consider you family already—although, after today, you may decide that you'd rather we not consider you family. I'm sorry all this got dropped on you so suddenly," she glanced at Chuck, who sat back down, "on both of you. Mom and I often disagree, but on this, we agreed: it was better just to tell you all of it at once."

Sarah glanced at Chuck too. Chuck's face was weary, almost distraught. The seams of his life were straining. Everything he thought he knew turned around. Ellie had been lying to him. Sarah was tempted to take him and run, get him above ground to fresh air, sunlight.

"How," he stopped, the word sounded like a croak, "How long have you known?" His eyes, on Ellie, were full of recrimination. Sarah could see how much that look hurt Ellie.

"Since shortly after you decided to join the CIA. Mom needed a new neurosurgeon for her team. The other one moved away from Washington. I came up on the list and she…" Ellie turned to her mom and her voice softened, "…she needed us, one of us, to know. She'd carried this burden alone for so long."

Ellie turned back to Chuck. "I understand your shock and your anger. I thought about burrowing out of this place with my bare hands when I first saw him…But I stayed. He's our _dad_. And, however the blame for this," she looked through the two-way mirror at her father, "…however it gets divided, I couldn't turn my back on him—or her. I'm sorry for the lies, Chuck. I had no real choice."

Frost stood. "I'm going to check on Carly and lunch. We'll eat in the main room." She headed for the door, but glanced back at Chuck. "I'm sorry too, Chuck. I can't say how much." Then she was gone into the hallway.

Ellie moved to the open chair. She sat down and pressed her hands flat on the table. She sighed, looked up with a partly forced smile. "What can I tell you about Dad, Chuck?"

Chuck took a deep breath. "Is there a name for what he has?"

"I'm not sure there is an exact name. At one time, it might have been called a severe nervous breakdown. Whatever happened to him, it was exacerbated by the drugs, by the stress and pressure. It has or it mimics features of schizophrenia. But, putting it in layman's terms, his mind eventually gave way under the enormous strain. He can still do the analytical work in his 'lucid' periods, but part of his on-going delusion is that he no longer understands where he really is in time. He takes his analyses to be gaming, fiction. Like war games—he calls them 'spy games'. You remember _Spy vs. Spy_? I remember you and him chuckling over those in _Mad Magazine._ " Ellie drifted into memory, then made herself return to the present. "He thinks it's a game, a cartoon, not reality. He ignores or doesn't see the changes to mom and to himself. But I don't think he can maintain the delusion if he sees either of us…"

"But Ellie, you're his doctor. How does he not see you?"

"Because I interact with him through our nurse, Carly, who does all the hands-on work. I talk to him when he is 'lucid' but through an intercom system. He never sees me." Her eyes misted again. "I've known he was alive, here, known he was suffering. I've tried to help. But I have never touched our dad since Syrup Day, Chuck. I've never spoken to him face-to-face or even had him recognize my voice. I am a stranger in Dad's life." Ellie's voice had been straining. It broke.

Chuck got up, and Ellie did too, and Sarah watched as they embraced each other. Just when she started to feel like she didn't belong there, like an interloper, Chuck opened the hug in her direction and she got up and hugged both the brother and the sister—two people who had become incredibly important to her life, the man she wanted to marry and the sister she'd never had.

After a few minutes, they all sat back down. Chuck spoke: "Is there any chance he will get better or that we could see him face-to-face?"

Ellie's face fell. "I don't know. Maybe. There's an experimental drug out there that virtually no one knows anything about. It had worked—in limited ways—on patients with similar problems. But we've put off giving it to Dad…"

"Why, Ellie?" Chuck demanded.

"Because of the Ring, Chuck. They have been hunting Dad for a long time. His analyses have kept them at bay, stymied and stifled them again and again. But he has become their number one target. They will kill him if they can. They don't know all about him, his troubles; they wouldn't care. They just want him dead.

"The problem is that our best chance of keeping him alive is keeping him like he is. We need him to protect him. He is, although he thinks he's playing a game, keeping himself safe. He's the best weapon we have against the Ring—the best defensive weapon. But Mom's brought you two in to be our offensive weapon.

"We are ready to take the fight to the Ring, to the Ring Elders. But Mom will tell you more about that shortly. Look, Chuck, I know this is a lot. Dad, me, Mom. There's more to come. Take it slow. You don't have to come to grips with it all at once. No one expects you too. I didn't, that's for damn sure. Just don't be too quick to judge Mom. She's made lots of mistakes and she knows it. Her guilt is eating her alive. She's trying to find a way back to us."

Chuck tried not to sound angry or hurt. "Ok, Ellie, you've earned my trust over the years. I guess I understand some of why you two chose not to tell me...to lie to me. If you agreed with Mom…well, ok, for now." He turned and looked at his father, still seated and staring as he had been when Chuck first saw him. "If I can't go in there, then I need to get out of here, out of this room."

"I get it, Chuck. C'mon, you two. There's still lots to talk about, lots to do."

}o{

Chuck followed Ellie from the room. Sarah took his hand. His mom had been right to read Sarah in too. Chuck wasn't sure he'd have weathered the past hour without her with him. He squeezed her hand and she looked at him, her eyes huge blue pools of sympathy. "I love you, Chuck. Just breathe. Look at me if it gets to be too much."

They emerged into the main room. On the table were sandwiches in stacks, and a large bowl of salad. And fresh brownies. Their sweet scent seemed strangely incongruous in that setting—homey, in a place that decidedly not-homey to Chuck. What had his mom called it? Castle. What a stupid name.

As Chuck and Sarah approached the table, Carly and a large, bearded man came into the room through one of the side doors. Carly had a tray of condiments in one hand, a tray of sliced tomatoes, onions, pickles and other items for the sandwiches. The man was carrying paper plates, cups, and utensils.

Chuck assumed the man was Norman. He was balding and thick bodied, but not fat. He seemed powerful, like a wrestler or football player, and he moved on his feet very lightly for a man his size.

Chuck turned his attention back to the table—despite the turmoil of the past hour, he was famished. He and Sarah hadn't eaten much of anything the day before, and breakfast earlier had been a hurried affair of toast with jelly and a half each of a shared apple.

Because his attention shifted to the table, Chuck missed the third person who came through the door. He felt Sarah squeeze his hand at the same moment as he heard a familiar voice.

"Welcome to Bag End, Frodo!" Martin Gomez was standing there, a large bag of potato chips in each hand.

Chuck felt dizzy, diagonal, teetering. " _Et tu, Brute_?"

* * *

 **A/N2** Turned tables, indeed. This interlude will require another chapter. More on Chuck's dad, and on old and new missions in Chapter 25, "Day to Day".

This chapter title is taken from a Nico Stai song. You may recall that one of Stai's songs, "One October Song", plays in the scene in which Shaw kills Chuck's dad (Chuck vs. the Subway). The song I've taken the title from here is a song about an absentee dad. Here's one verse:

And here you go floating out on some goddam window sill  
Screaming  
Believing  
There's something in your eyes for them to hold  
But there's nothing there to hold  
You waited 'round for some 12 fucking years  
For your father to call  
But if he's not called you yet  
You know he's never gonna call  
And there's nothing you can do

You've got one thing in your heart  
But another thing is what you do with it…

Listen to the tune. It is available all around the Internet. Think of it as playing in the background of later sections this chapter.

My thanks [bow] to the wonderful _wilf21_ who mentioned Nico Stai's "Miss Friday" to me (it plays during Chuck vs. Phase Three) and who got me to listen to that song more closely—and, as a result, to start listening to all of Stai seriously.


	25. Chapter 25: Day to Day

**A/N1** Well, now. That last chapter. Sheesh. As my grandpa used to say, "Things is a mess." There is an Intersect, of sorts, and he's been bunkered. By his wife—and not in a good way. (Is there a good way to be bunkered? Am I the only one who likes that verb? Ok, ok, stop nodding. Wait. Which question are you answering?)

This chapter won't really solve any problems. It may just create new ones. (You'll have to read it to see.) But it will provide more information, and brief you on the upcoming mission. More on that after the chapter too.

Thanks for reading. And for reviewing. You're good people, y'all. (As we say here in Alabama.)

Don't own Chuck.

* * *

 **Turned Tables**

 _Interlude (Part Two)_

* * *

Sunday, February 18, 2008  
Washington DC  
Inside Castle  
1:00 pm

* * *

CHAPTER 25 Day to Day

* * *

Chuck picked at his salad. He had felt hungry when he saw the food, smelled it. But when he tried to eat, he just couldn't—not much anyway. The meal had become a silent affair. Martin had tried to lighten the tone, but even his indefatigable cheeriness had proven…defatigable.

Now an uncomfortable, sad and slightly hostile silence gripped the room. Chuck knew he was one source of the sadness—and that he was the source of the hostility. Finally, it got the better of him.

"So, Mom. You broke Dad and then you bunkered him. That's the story, right?"

Everyone looked down except Frost, who met Chuck's gaze, and Sarah, who was looking at Chuck.

"Yes, Chuck, that is the story." Ellie started to say something, but Frost gestured for her not to do so. "This is all my fault and my doing. I live with that every day. I live here most days, so there is no forgetting…" Frost glanced around the room. "We are all here because I did not love the man I loved…the way I should have loved him." She finished; she looked down at her food.

Chuck reeled his hostility back in. Sarah's hand on his leg helped him get a grip on himself. Recrimination was not going to change anything. He decided to change the topic.

"So, have you figured anything out about the Ring tech Sarah intercepted?"

Martin answered. "Yeah, Chuck. We still don't know exactly how it works, but your Dad was lucid until last night and he and I worked on it together. The implant works via an electrical connection with parts of the brain—like a kind of flash drive, which is what it sorta looks like. We aren't exactly sure how it gets turned on or off, or even if it can be turned on or off. Maybe, once it is implanted, it is just on. The person who has it can then 'download' tremendous amounts of 'visual data'. It is a prosthetic eidetic memory. Ha! Like that They Might Be Giants song, "We Want a Rock". Remember, Chuck? 'Everybody wants prosthetic foreheads on their real heads'?" Martin looked around smiling. But he was the only one. "Oh. Ok. So, we think the thing's unstable because the, uh, electrical connection is unstable—or maybe it's just too strong. Anyhoo, it ends up activating parts of the brain other the ones it is supposed to interact with, stimulating parts of the brain. We think the Ring's plan is to 'download' as much US intelligence data as possible. They want access to what we…" Martin gestured at the computers and monitors all around them, "…have access to."

"But US intelligence data is constantly changing. Wouldn't what they 'download' get dated quick?" Sarah asked.

"Yeah, but even old data can be important if you are looking for patterns, the way that Doc—sorry, I mean Stephen—can. But, yeah, it's not a perfect theft system by any means. Especially when you add in the side-effects. Still, it's a lot more effective than trying to steal documents or to sneak in an actual flash drive. Part of the beauty of it is that there is no actual interface with the computer. The information is being lifted from the screen, by the eyes, not from something plugged into the system. So, there's no record of the 'download'. Doc…Stephen thinks this is a 'first-step' technology. That it is just one part of an attempt to create a version of what Chuck pretended to be in Burbank—an Intersect."

"But right now, we think that they are using the data they've stolen and plan to steal primarily as part of their attempt to locate Doc."

Frost took up the thread. "We got lucky. The Ring agent in Atlanta, the FBI cryptanalyst, turned out to be a highly placed member of the Ring. Not an Elder—but a trusted, long-time agent. Under… interrogation…he revealed that locating Stephen is the now overriding objective of the Ring.

"They know he exists. They know he has been the thorn in their side. We believe they are ready to make a big push—to do something big—but that they are unwilling to do it before they have taken care of Stephen. They fear that he will figure it out, figure out how to stop it.

"We have picked up worrisome signs, patterns, showing that they are digging, and, unfortunately, digging in the right direction. We do not think they know that their nemesis is Stephen Carmichael. They do not know about Castle. But they have the scent. We are not sure how they got it, but I fear our days here are numbered. Unless we can stop them. We need to make them worry about themselves."

Martin, excited, jumped in. "Yeah, yeah, you know, the best defense is a good offense…Wait, is that how that saying goes. I never did understand golf."

Everyone looked at him dryly, although as Frost went on, she tacitly agreed with his point, confused though it was.

"We want to send you and Sarah after a Ring Elder. When you passed on word about the clown college in Paris, I asked a French agent I know, Ilsa Trinchina, to look around. She did. She sent back photos. There's a teacher there, Anatole Marcel," Martin hit a button on his laptop and a photo came up on all the monitors, "who we—who _Stephen_ —identified as another high-ranking Ring agent. He's American, passing for French. He evidently grew up there, the son of expat parents. He is almost certainly the link to Antonio's clowns."

"Oh, God," Sarah interjected, real unhappiness in her voice, "you aren't sending us to clown school, are you. I am so _done_ with clowns." She looked at Chuck. "Well, all but one." Everyone laughed, then Sarah passed around her phone, with a picture of Chesko.

Frost continued, and the phone made the rounds to suppressed laughter. "No, because we are not really interested in Anatole—not as such. We are interested in this man…" Martin punched more buttons. "Samuel Sartre. He and Anatole have a real, but carefully guarded connection. Officially, they are only acquaintances. Marcel teaches at the college; Sartre is the French equivalent of what we might call a trustee of the college. But Sartre is also a major player in the French government. He holds no official post, but he can make or break careers. We are sure he is Ring and virtually certain he is a Ring Elder—maybe the only one in France." Norman handed Sarah her phone, looking at Chuck and grinning.

"Now as far as we can ascertain, Marcel had not maintained contact with Antonio or any of Circus Maximus' clowns, so he should have no knowledge of anything that has happened to them, not yet, anyway, or any knowledge of you. Antonio's CIA contact has been taken; we identified him last night. There is no sign that he sent the footage of you, Sarah, to anyone else. He probably intended to pass it on to the Ring eventually, but we now know that Antonio was playing everyone against everyone. Antonio rolled over and told us everything last night in hopes of getting a deal…"

"Anyway, Antonio was not going to pass that footage on until he knew he could not use it in some way. We think part of Greasy's assignment at the circus was to keep Antonio on the Ring straight-and-narrow. But Antonio figured out Greasy's…tastes…and used them to keep Greasy under his control. He confessed that he promised Sarah to him…"

Chuck's face turned grim. "We knew that; Greasy shared…his intentions."

Frost made a face. "And, evidently, Greasy had been watching your trailer. Not because he suspected you, but so he might catch a glimpse of Sarah…"

Sarah groaned sickly. Martin followed the groan with this: "A Peeping Greasy Tom? Clowns are creepy enough without that extra layer. Am-I-right?" He turned to Sarah—she was seated beside him—and he held out his fist. She gave it a weak fist bump.

"Antonio was not a volunteer to the Ring. They got him through the same tactic they were using against Graham. Gambling and gambling debts. Evidently, Antonio gambled very heavily after his accident. Littered Europe with IOUs…and one thing led to another. The clowns were Ring in a way that Antonio never really was. By the way, it does look like he kept his family out of it."

"You mentioned Graham," Sarah pointed out, "any news on his disappearance?"

Frost looked at Norman and then at Martin. Each shook his head. "No, no news. The CIA is keeping the disappearance quiet for now. It looks bad for the CIA to be out-spied. Luckily, Graham had no family and no friends we know of to cause an uproar. The interim director is a hardass, but she's fair. She will almost certainly go digging into Graham's past to try to get a lead. She may unearth the gambling stuff, maybe conclusive evidence…If she does, then even if Graham makes it back, he won't sit in the big chair again. They'll force him out quietly. Stephen believes that the Ring must know whatever it is that Graham knows—and was going to use against the Ring when he sent Sarah on the missions."

"So, wait, Mom. Dad knows about Sarah? Does he know about her partner?" Chuck couldn't quite get everything into focus. "Does he know about me?" Impatience, anger, hurt all colored his tone.

"He knows Sarah's partner is Charles Carmichael. But he thinks your name a mere coincidence. He does not believe you or Sarah exist, except on paper or on the computer, as part of the spy games he plays. He likes you two. He calls you 'the good guys'—no offense, Sarah."

"None taken." Sarah smiled at Frost and then at Chuck, who could smile in return—a little.

"So," Frost continued, "I am hoping you two will undertake a mission to Paris. We need to find definitive proof of Sartre's involvement in the Ring—even better, we need to know more about the Elders." Frost paused.

"Stephen believes—and I think he is correct—that the European Ring leaders are shortly to have a meeting in Paris, and that Sartre will be the host of the meeting. We need to figure out exactly when that meeting is to take place, and where, and, most of all, who will be present."

"The DGSE has put Trinchina at our disposal. She will be there to help you when you arrive. I have also secured the loan of Carina Miller from the DEA. Sartre is married—but he is a notorious womanizer with a known preference for redheads, and a taste for cuckolding other men.

"Miller is Sarah's friend, so I take it we can trust her…" Frost turned to Sarah, who nodded although she was frowning. "She is also exactly Sartre's type. Chuck, your cover will be as Carina's husband. Your job is to make Sartre dislike you enough that he will find chasing Carina irresistible, given that he undoubtedly be attracted to her anyway…"

"So, you want Carina to _seduce_ Sartre?" Chuck asked, and he could feel Sarah's interest in the question too. She had leaned forward.

Ellie jumped in. "No, Chuck, she is just to interest him enough to get the two of you invited to Sartre's country home. That is the most likely place for the Ring meeting to take place—although we have no confirmation of that. Once you are there, you need to get to Sartre's personal office and see if you can find out _when_ , _where_ and _who_. Carina should shut him down completely when the time comes. I doubt she will even have to flirt with Sartre at all. She will just need to be _present_."

Sarah laughed—but with a hint of annoyance. "You don't know Carina. She tends to take missions down unexpected paths. And she can't be present without also flirting. If Carina is breathing, she's flirting."

Ellie looked at Sarah. "Sarah, we are not expecting Chuck and Carina to have to work hard to establish their cover. After all, we want Sartre to believe they _are_ married—but not _happily_. Sartre has a history of running this gambit. He likes to take things from other men. It's a power trip for him—a double conquest. He brings couples to his house and then tries to…separate them. But Sarah, we would not ask you or Chuck or Carina to do anything that makes you uncomfortable."

Sarah sat back with a sigh. "I get that, Ellie. But what makes me or Chuck uncomfortable may not make Carina…uncomfortable…in the least." Chuck saw Sarah gave Ellie a significant glance—and saw Ellie nod. He thought about Carina's attempt to seduce him back in Burbank. He gulped silently. Maybe this wasn't the best mission plan. He stole a glance at Sarah but he could not read her expression clearly.

"Sarah, you will run the mission—agent in charge. You get to decide what _everyone_ is comfortable with. I will make sure that Carina gets that message," Frost said, in her most clipped, fiercest tone. Chuck remembered just how scary she could be.

Chuck began to drift as details connected with the mission became the focus of the conversation. He looked at his mom. That she could do what she did surprised him—but maybe it didn't shock him exactly. In the abstract, he might have said that she was capable of such a thing, of anything—for the goddamn job.

But his sister, now listening to Frost tell Sarah more about Sartre's role in the French government, how could she have been involved in this, agreed to keep him on the outside all this time? She was his rock, the person he trusted above all others, until Sarah entered his life.

What now?

He felt his anger rising again. He made himself stand up and walk around the room. He could hardly ever remember being angry at Ellie. Frustrated, even resentful a few times, sure, when she had to be 'mom', had to tell him no. But angry? Not until now.

Frost's voice broke through Chuck's anger. "So, will you two do this, will you go to France? I can't give you an exact departure schedule yet, but it will be sometime in the next few days, I think." Sarah looked at Chuck. He could see that she was willing but had reservations about the mission. Chuck did not take the time to think about that. His anger spoke for him.

"Sure, we'll go. The sooner I get the hell out of…here…the better."

Sarah's expression became pinched for a moment—but then she smoothed it out. She nodded at Frost.

"Chuck," Frost said, "please stay around and talk with me and with Ellie some more. Let me explain…let me try to explain." Ellie's eyes were pleading with him to stay.

"No. I've had enough of explanation. I want to go. Now."

Frost's shoulders slumped. Ellie looked away. Sarah flinched—but she got up and went to Chuck. She looked at Carly. "Can you drive us home?"

}o{

Sarah was anxious and upset on the drive back to the apartment. She was worried about Chuck, of course; his life had sort of caved in around him. His dad, alive but apparently irreparably broken, his mom the agent of those changes, his sister involved in the lie, and his best friend too. She had known they were still going to have to travel a distance before they would be able to exit the spy life, but she had thought they were getting closer, but now…

Now, what?

And this mission. Carina. Carina posing as Chuck's wife. Sarah would be glad to see Carina—but she dreaded Carina's reaction to the changes in her and her life. Carina was not just unpredictable on missions, she was unpredictable period. Except for this: she would make things difficult.

Well, Sarah would worry about Carina in Paris. Chuck was her priority now, now and always. She scooted closer to him and leaned her head on his shoulder. He stared out his window, but put his arm around her.

Sarah noticed that Carly was watching them in the rearview mirror. Her eyes were soft and sympathetic, sad. She smiled quickly, kindly at Sarah. Sarah smiled back. Chuck remained focused on nothing in particular outside his window.

Carly dropped them at their apartment. The doorman, Derrick, was all smiles as they came in. He hadn't seen them last night; his shift had ended before they returned. "Well, well, well—look here. Chuck, my man, and the lovely Sarah. Haven't seen you two in a few weeks."

"We've been out of town," Sarah volunteered when she realized that Chuck hadn't even registered Derrick's greeting.

Derrick looked at Chuck, puzzled. "Good to have you two home!" He waved at them as the elevator doors closed. Sarah turned to Chuck. She put both hands up to cup his face. He finally looked at her. "I'm so sorry about all this, Chuck. About your dad. About…about it all." She hugged him gently, because of his ribs, and he hugged her back.

They got off the elevator and went to their door. Inside, Sarah took Chuck's hand and led him to the couch.

"Sarah," Chuck began after a long sigh, "I apologize for answering for both of us about this mission. I was angry and suddenly felt trapped down there. I had to get out. But I am sorry. You seem worried about the mission? Maybe we should say no?"

Sarah gave Chuck a kiss. "Apology accepted. I understand. I understood when it happened. And, yes, I am worried about the mission, but mainly because of Carina. She is not just unpredictable. She's…well, she likes to take what I like, that's one thing, and she'll know I like you. Even worse, she'll know I love you. Carina is…complicated….and she is cynical, and contemptuous of the…future we want. Deep down, she is a romantic—she wants love, passion. But she doesn't want any of the traditional accompaniments—commitment, marriage, children. She's created her own Catch-22. Carina's only real commitment is to the spy life. She has no intention of doing anything that would require her to rethink that commitment. So, her romantic side is doomed to frustration. She knows it, at some level, hence the cynicism."

"And you are worried about her reaction to…us? To our plans? You don't have to tell her, I guess."

"Oh, yes, _I do_. She knew in Burbank that I was falling for you. We haven't talked since Burbank but she'll surely know that I have fallen for you. And she's not above…making a play for you, partly because I have fallen for you." Sarah was embarrassed to admit this about her friend. She glanced away from Chuck for a second, then back to him. He had an odd look on his face.

"About that…" Chuck's face was reluctant, a little fearful.

"Oh, shit. Don't tell me: she already did?" Sarah's pulse spiked with sudden anger, jealousy. "I will kill her."

"She tried to seduce me— _but it didn't work_." Chuck rushed the last part in. "Not at all. Not at all. In any way. I mean I did see her in lingerie," now it was Chuck's turn to glance away and then back, "but I didn't do anything…I wasn't tempted. I was in love with you already, Sarah. She was…um…perplexed by reaction—my non-reaction, that is."

Sarah was torn between laughing at the thought of Carina's failed seduction—or becoming enraged by it. She felt a confused mixture of both reactions. No doubt, Carina told herself that she was _just checking_ …making sure that Chuck was serious about Sarah. But there was also no doubt that Carina would have gone through with it if Chuck had responded, and no doubt that Carina's motives were mixed—as Carina's motives always were.

She and Carina would…chat…about this in Paris. Sarah made herself let go of the thought. Carina was a problem for Paris. Chuck was deflecting, trying to avoid talking about what was hurting him so much. Sarah was familiar with the strategy herself.

"It's ok, Chuck, I know Carina; I should have suspected that she tried something. Let's worry about her later. Talk to me about today." She held his eyes and waited.

}o{

Chuck thought that maybe he shouldn't have mentioned the Carina-seduction thing. But he'd wanted to tell Sarah for a long time—and he did not want it to come up for the first time in Paris, on the mission. Still, he'd let it go unmentioned for so long, and now, with all that had come to be between them, he felt like keeping it from her was tantamount to becoming himself complicit in what Carina had tried—not complicit as Carina wanted, but complicit somehow nonetheless.

But now Sarah wanted to talk about what he had found out, about…Castle…and all that was revealed there. His soul was merry-go-rounding to a drooling calliope. _Circus Minimus._

He—he, Chuck Carmichael, didn't want to talk about it—he wanted to brood in exterior silence. But he knew that was a bad idea. He knew it would be unkind, unfair to Sarah. She—she, Sarah Walker wanted to talk about it—she wanted to help him.

He took a very deep breath and was surprised to find his eyes filling with tears. He'd expected anger, but what he felt most was a deep, baffled sorrow.

"My dad, Sarah, my dad…is alive. I had told myself for years that he was dead. As much as that hurt me to think, it was better than believing he'd just abandoned us, clear-eyed abandonment. That he was somewhere else, with another family, maybe…another son that he loved…more." He stopped, choked. "But he isn't dead, and he didn't abandon us. He…forgot…us. Sort of. If I understood, when he is 'lucid', his mind is still fossilized, trapped in the amber of a time when I was a boy. So, he remembers me but does not know me—or Ellie.

"It's hard to imagine what his life is like. But now I know he is alive—but I can't get to him. He's there, but he's not there, here but not here. He's at a spatial, but more importantly, I guess, a temporal distance from me. And I can't cross either one. I have my dad back, on the condition that I don't have him back."

"I…I mean of course I am happy he is alive. Somewhere, underneath all this turmoil," he gestured at his own chest, "I am overjoyed about that. But, right now, it seems…it seems…it seems like a cruel joke, a killing joke." Chuck saw Sarah's eyes narrow for a moment at his final phrase. "Sorry—a Batman reference, probably a bad one in this case." He hung his head.

Sarah took his hands. "But what about your mom, Ellie, Martin? Can you get past this with them?" Chuck let go of her hands and stood up quickly, walking away from her question. "Chuck?"

He walked to the door. He was tempted to open it and run—run as fast as he could, as far as he could. The spy life had officially crept into every part of his life, darkened it all. His comment that morning about the apparent light at the end of the tunnel being really the light of an oncoming train….He turned back to face Sarah.

"I don't know. I'm still too shocked by it to know how I feel. Well, with Mom, it's just the latest and most blazingly spectacular of her maternal fiascos. I can't say I saw it coming, but this massive betrayal from that quarter doesn't quite leave me gasping. I've sort of been braced against it all my life, ever since she effectively checked out of it…But Ellie? Ellie. I…uh…I know how to be angry, even furious with Mom. I have no idea how to be angry with Ellie. Martin—hell, I don't know. I never imagined he could keep any secret, much less something like this. I don't know. I just don't know, Sarah…"

"It's ok, Chuck, you don't have to know. Come with me." She led him into their bedroom and she got him to lie down. She went around the bed to her side and cuddled against him carefully. "Let it go, for now, Chuck, and just hold me. Hold on to me." He put his arms around her as tears gathered and ran down his cheeks. He felt her brush them away with a feathery touch. She put her leg across his legs and burrowed into his neck. She was so warm, so alive against him. In a few minutes, he was asleep.

}o{

Sarah was dozing next to Chuck. She was profoundly glad he had gone to sleep. He needed rest; the shock to his system had been so profound. Chuck did not just feel what he felt. He lived it. That was one reason he was not good at hiding his feelings. If he was going to find his way through the events of the day, he needed to be able to step back from it. Sleep might be the only way he could.

She looked down at her bare ring finger. They had taken off their cover rings this morning before Carly picked them up. Sarah had felt her heart sink as she slipped the bridal set off. It sank lower as Chuck took his off. He'd looked at her and they'd had an awkward moment. Sarah thought seriously about getting down on one knee right then and asking him to marry her. But she'd been afraid to do it, unsure what he was thinking. He'd been…different…since they'd taken off their circus costumes and come home.

Ever since she'd known him, he'd been, well, unsinkable, buoyant. She'd been guilty of exploiting that at times, and she felt ashamed of herself now. She'd been harsher, more closed off, than she needed to be at times, partially justifying the hurts she'd dealt him by telling herself that he would soon recover. She'd been cavalier with his heart time after time. She was determined to make it up to him, to protect his heart, to hold it close to hers. She should've asked, proposed, despite all that had happened today. Maybe it would have given them both something precious to cling to, a life-preserver in this life-despoiling world they were trapped in.

Now, they were going to go to Paris; Chuck was going to pretend to be married to Carina. She'd seen Carina in that role with other agents. How often she'd been eager to be sure that they were convincingly _intimate_. Sarah ground her teeth together. Carina was her friend. Surely, she'd respect Sarah's wishes?

Sarah heard a knock at the door. She opened her eyes and looked at Chuck. He was still fully asleep. She carefully unwound from him and got up. She smoothed her blouse and hair and went to the door. She looked through the peephole. Ellie was standing there, looking slightly ill, nervous.

The look remained after Sarah opened the door. Ellie seemed both disappointed and relieved not to see Chuck. "Hi, Sarah," she offered wanly. "I had to come. The thought of Chuck here, after this morning…hating me…I couldn't stay away."

"He's sleeping, Ellie." Sarah gestured for Ellie to come in. "He needed to. He got bombarded this morning." Sarah knew her tone held a note of accusation—but she couldn't keep it out. She felt for Ellie, but still.

"I understand. And we did. You have every right to be angry with me." Ellie plopped down on the couch, clearly miserable.

"You know, Ellie," Sarah said, joining her on the couch, "I don't understand why your mom didn't tell Chuck too."

Ellie took a moment to adjust herself, then turned to Sarah. "She didn't want to tell me. But when it turned out I was not only qualified to help Dad, but maybe uniquely qualified, she decided to bring me in. I argued with her—hell, we went around and around, battling—trying to get her to tell him. But she didn't want anyone to know who did not have to know. I got to know because I could be Dad's doctor, not because I was Dad's daughter. And I think she was especially frightened of Chuck's reaction. He and Dad had such a special bond. I think Mom thought he would find her unforgivable, and she couldn't stand the thought of that."

"But that's crazy, Ellie. He's Chuck. Forgiving is what he does. I should know; I've had to rely on his forgiveness over and over. He'll forgive her—he'll forgive you. But it will take time." Sarah put her hand gently on Ellie's forearm.

"I hope so, Sarah. But maybe even Chuck has his limits. Maybe there are unforgivable sins. All I know for sure is that this is a mess. Lying to Chuck has been killing me, so in one way today was a relief. But now I don't know if he will ever believe me again, not about anything important. Shit."

"Chuck is a believer, Ellie. He's making one of me. He'll come around. But you need to be careful with him now. He'd been deeply hurt and he's angrier than I knew he could be. It would probably be a good idea to give him some space."

Ellie looked down at her shoes, nodding. Remembering that Chuck was asleep in the bedroom, she dropped her voice to an even quieter whisper. "So, Sarah, what was that look when we were talking about Carina Miller. She's your friend, right?"

"Yes, Ellie, she'd my friend. But Carina has her own unique conception of friendship, one on which she is not only allowed, but obliged, to try to sleep with anyone she thinks I might care for." Sarah blushed when she said that out loud. "She…um…did her duty with Chuck in Burbank. No, wait, that sounded wrong. I mean she tried to seduce Chuck in Burbank, but he turned her down." Sarah made herself stop.

"Your _friend_ tried to have sex with the man you were falling for?"

"It was a test—she was making sure that he had real feelings for me." Sarah blushed again.

"Oooh Kaay. So, if Chuck had yielded, she would've sent him packing and told you that he didn't have real feelings?" Ellie was clearly trying to navigate unfamiliar terrain.

"No, if Chuck had yielded, she would have had sex with him. Repeatedly, I am sure. And then she would have told me he didn't have real feelings for me." Sarah's voice had grown even quieter than Ellie's.

"And this is her duty, as your _friend_?" Sarah could see Ellie fight to keep from putting air-quotes around the final word.

"Ellie, I know it's twisted, twisty. But so much in the spy world is. I know it seems like Carina is awful, but it's not like that, exactly. You see, she repeats the mantra to herself all the time— _Spies don't fall in love_. She believes it, or she desperately wants to."

"But, wait," Ellie broke in, waving her hands, "don't your feelings matter too? I mean what if Chuck had yielded. You were already in love with my brother, Sarah, whether you will admit it or not…Why would Carina not care about whether you cared?"

"That's the twisty part, Ellie. Carina wants to believe the mantra, so she wants to believe that I can't fall in love, since I am a spy. Even if I think I have. So, if Chuck yielded, then he didn't have real feelings for me—and since my feelings for him couldn't have been real, either… _all good_." Sarah bit her lip, aware that her explanation didn't explain very much. And made everything sound worse. Awful.

But Ellie seemed to begin to understand. "That is twisty but maybe I see, now. _Spies don't fall in love_ —I wish I had a dollar for every time Mom has said that to me. In some way, Mom's whole life has been spent pacing, caged, in that mantra. In love with Dad, but doubting she could really be in love with him—because she was a spy. Knowing him as her husband, but then making herself treat him as her asset—because she was a spy. Dad's belief that Mom couldn't love him unless he was a spy too, or involved in her spying. He was her husband—and he turned himself into her asset."

"So much of my damn family tragedy is caught up in that shitty mantra." Ellie slumped on the couch. "I guess now maybe you understand some of the reasons Mom wanted—why I wanted—Chuck to stay out of the CIA. Mom saw spying destroy Dad. Mom was the spy who did it. At least, that's how she sees it. And Chuck is—was—is—so much like him…"

"I wish I could have known your Dad, you know, before…" Sarah gestured vaguely to the past.

"Me, too. So, can you handle this situation with Carina? Should we rethink the op? Call her off?" Ellie was clearly concerned, ready to do whatever Sarah wanted.

"No, I can handle Carina. And Chuck has proven he can too. We'll figure it out." Sarah's tone was a bit more confident than she felt. She was angry about Burbank. Telling Carina how she felt, and getting Carina to believe it—that was going to be a demanding task, one to which Sarah did not look forward. "She's a pain almost everywhere," Sarah continued, drawing out the last word and making Ellie laugh, "except in a fight, and we might need her."

}o{

The next day, Frost finished arrangements for the Paris trip. They would leave tomorrow. Chuck blankly refused to go back to Castle, refused to talk to his mom or to Ellie, so Carly brought the cover materials and other things Chuck and Sarah would take with them. She also broke the news that Martin would make the trip. Mary decided she needed an analyst on the scene.

After Carly dropped off the materials, she stood in the doorway for a minute. Chuck was holding the door, ready to close it when she left. "Be careful, Chuck. Samuel Sartre is not like anyone else you've been after. Don't let his witless womanizing make you think him witless. He has the power he has for a reason. He's not crazy—he's a Ring true believer. Your mom made me promise to tell you that."

Chuck stiffened. "Tell her I know I can depend on her to tell me things."

Carly's face darkened, and Chuck regretted his tone of voice. Carly was only the messenger. "Chuck, she may be responsible for this hell she lives in, partly responsible anyway. But she has never run from it. In her way, she's been faithful to your father. Faithful. She needs to be _forgiven_ , yes, I agree; she's been in the wrong. But she _needs_ to be forgiven, Chuck. She loves you more than you realize." She turned smartly, with military crispness, and walked away.

Chuck shut the door.

* * *

 **A/N2** Ouch. This chapter bruises a little.

So, tune in next time as we travel to La Ville-Lumière, Paris, and begin our new mission, _The Eiffel Tower High Mission_. The fun begins in Chapter 26, "Hardly Getting Over It". (There'll be a Hüsker Dü soundtrack to this mission: both the mission title and the first chapter title are taken from the album _Candy Apple Grey_.) Ilse Trinchina, Carina Miller, Martin Gomez—and badguy-ery! See you then! (Please drop a review in the collection box as you leave the auditorium.)


	26. Chapter 26: Hardly Getting Over It

**A/N1** A new mission in Paris. Old and new players, old and new issues. While this mission will not, as far as I can predict, take as much time as the last, it would be a good idea to grab a coffee and a chocolate croissant. We'll be in the City of Lights for a while.

Thanks for generous reviews of the last chapter. You have no idea what a help it is to a writer to find out whether his or her intentions are being realized. Reviews, even brief ones, help with that.

Don't own Chuck.

* * *

 **Turned Tables**

 _The Eiffel Tower High Mission_

* * *

Friday, February 22, 2008  
Paris, France  
 _Patisserie_ near the _L'Ecole Internationale de Theatre_  
10:15 am

* * *

CHAPTER 26 Hardly Getting Over It

* * *

Sarah and Chuck had been three days in Paris, but they'd seen little of the City of Lights.

They arrived at night and were whisked away in a car with Ilsa Trinchina. She'd taken them immediately to a DGSI safe house. Trinchina was officially with DGSE ('E' for 'exterior') but was working with DGSI ('I' for 'interior') since the mission was taking place on French soil.

Trinchina, dark-haired and lovely, had smiled and quoted the line from _North by Northwest_ : "We're all in the same alphabet soup." Since Sarah wasn't exactly sure who she worked for officially anymore—the CIA paid her as far she knew, so that seemed the safest answer, but she wasn't sure it was the correct one—she wasn't eager to get too far into alphabet questions.

The plan was for them to work in the safe house for the first couple of days, then for the team to move to the _Hôtel Plaza Athéné_ , where Chuck and Sarah would have a room, as would Carina, and as would Martin. Trinchina would not be staying at the hotel; she had a temporary apartment nearby. Martin arrived the next day, but they had not seen much of him. Carina was still not in town, although she was expected any time. They had worked steadily in the safe house, finishing Chuck and Carina's cover, memorizing photos and addresses, various routes through the city, metro schedules. This morning, the morning of the third day, preparations were at an end and the mission proper could begin.

Sarah was seated across from Chuck inside a small _patisserie_ , across the rain-soaked street from _L'Ecole Internationale de Theatre Jacques Lecoq_. Lecoq had been a legendary clown—a master of mime and gesture. He'd once described himself as a collector of gestures, and as in pursuit of the perfect gesture. Chuck had told Sarah that, and it stuck with her.

Her life of changing names and cons with her father and then of changing covers with Graham had made her something of a collector of gestures too. She knew that you could often sell a cover better with the right gesture at the right time than you could with perfect accents or the right clothes.

There was nothing prepossessing about the building that housed the school. It was a large gray, three-story structure with a small metal sign next to the double doors. Sarah sipped the hot, thick black coffee, _café_ , in her cup, and tore off a piece of indescribably delicious _pain au chocolat_ , still warm from the oven. Both helped her shake off some of the chill of the rainy, cold Parisian day. Some of it. The problem was that Chuck was giving off a chill of his own, and it was affecting her.

Although Chuck had been attentive and responsive to Trinchina, and although he had managed to be at least cordial to Martin when he showed up, and although he worked hard to be fully responsive to Sarah, his default since Castle was still distant, introspective, unhappy. He tried hard to hide it, but he was struggling. Whenever he didn't force himself to focus, to be present, he simply withdrew. Sarah had tried to get him to talk but with scant success. Ellie had called. Chuck had not answered his phone. He had talked to Frost, but he had been icy, doing a remarkable imitation of her clipped, efficient tone. It was unnerving.

Sarah caught the attention of the woman behind the counter and ordered another coffee. After the woman brought it to the table, Sarah leaned in toward Chuck. "Carina is due today," Sarah checked her watch, "actually, she's probably already in town, and I want us," she motioned to herself and to Chuck, "to be on the same page. If she thinks we aren't, she'll make us pay. I need to know what you are comfortable telling her…about us."

Chuck turned from the window and looked at Sarah, slowly becoming fully present. She could see him catching up with her question. _Shit_. If he was this unhappy and loggy around Carina, it was going to make getting Carina to understand harder. Carina was going to disbelieve to begin with, no matter what. Finally, Chuck spoke. He sounded like himself for the first time all morning.

"Sarah, I am comfortable telling her anything that is true about us. I take it that the more important question is what you are comfortable telling her."

Sarah sat back. "Well, I am comfortable telling her anything that is true about us—eventually. I just don't know that we should immediately tell her about wanting to leave the spy life and…other things we want after that. She'd going to have a hard time just believing that we are in an exclusive, committed relationship, that we are living together."

"You say 'we', Sarah, but don't you mean 'I'? She's going to have a hard time believing _you_ are in an exclusive, committed relationship, that you are living with me, right?"

Sarah rubbed her forehead. Things with Carina always got complicated fast. The CAT squad spent so much of its time wending through Carina-caused complications it was amazing they had succeeded as often as they had. "Yes, that's true—but now that she realizes you are a spy, she is going to have a hard time believing it of you too. She won't have any trouble believing we are sleeping together, even though she may think you aren't my type, but she won't believe that it means anything to either of us, since it wouldn't to her."

"What is your _type_ , Sarah?" He grinned. She felt the last of the chill of the morning leave her. Her Chuck was back, at least for now.

"Gangly, reluctant heroes with curls, I guess…Of course, it helps it they also have the hands of a pianist and the tongue of an auctioneer…" Chuck dropped his head; his ears burned deep red.

He laughed; it was so good to see him laugh. "Being in France seems to have had an…interesting effect on you, Sarah. That kiss this morning…Wow!"

"I had thought you didn't notice," she commented, dryly.

His face was immediately apologetic. "I know. I'm sorry, Sarah. I take no kiss of yours for granted. I've just been down—and these gray, rainy, foreign days haven't been helping me. Thank you for putting up with me."

" _Pas de problème_ , sweetie." Sarah giggled. "Aren't you going to call me Morticia—and kiss your way up my arm, Gomez?"

Chuck shook his head jerkily, a little dazed. "'Sweetie'? I'm not complaining, I just wasn't sure that Sarah Walker did pet names…" Sarah grinned and shrugged. "So, what pet name may I give you?" Chuck asked, cautiously, turning his head a bit to the side.

He'd been asking the question seriously, but then he had an inspiration. "Hey, I know, we could be like Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn in _Adam's Rib_. You remember? We watched that once together in Burbank. He's Adam, she'd Amanda—but their pet names for each other are Pinky and Pinkie. ''Y' for him; 'I', 'e' for me''."

Sarah gave him her longest, flattest look, all the while tearing off a piece of her pastry and feeding it to him. "Um, _no_ , sweetie. You're just going to have to figure this one out on your own. But remember, I have full veto power, as I have just shown."

Chuck twisted his lips sheepishly. "I could be Pinky—and you could be the Brain."

"Chuck…" Sarah growled dangerously.

"Ok, ok, I was just joking."

"No, Chuck, there's Anatole Marcel. And look who's arriving at the same time, Samuel Sartre."

Each of the two men was carrying an umbrella against the rain. Marcel, tall, gaunt and angular, moved like a praying mantis, slow, steady and stiff. He had a ridiculous goatee that hung a full three or four inches below his chin. The picture Martin had shown them in Castle was evidently pre-goatee.

Sartre, by contrast, was, if not short, then decidedly not tall. But he had a way of holding himself, ramrod straight, that made him seem taller and more commanding, Napoleonic. He was handsome, with bright white teeth and wavy blond hair. His controlled dynamism in person made him more striking than Martin's Castle photograph suggested. Sartre and Marcel almost jammed their umbrellas together at the door, and Sartre smiled politely and stepped gracefully aside so that Marcel could enter the doorway first. There was nothing in either man's manner that suggested they were anything but business acquaintances.

As Marcel went through the door, Sarah noticed him notice a woman walking by. Not, not _walking_ , _strutting_ would be closer. The woman pulled Sartre's eyes to her like a magnet. It was Carina—already on the scene, and already free-lancing. Sartre stood and watched her as she strutted down the street, her red hair uncovered despite the rain. After a moment, he visibly forced himself to look away, smiling all the while. He went into the building.

A few minutes later, Carina came skipping across the street, easily avoiding puddles with her long legs. She saw Sarah and Chuck through the window and came in. She stood and shook the water off herself, brushing back her damp hair. She pulled a chair over to the table and sat down beside Chuck.

"Well, as I live and breathe! Sarah Walker and Burbank Boy. Imagine meeting you here! Did you see? I saw Sartre as I was coming up the street. Thought I might as well go ahead and start his engine. Trinchina told me where to find you two." Carina reached over the table and grabbed the remaining three-quarters of Sarah's _pain au chocolat_ and began to eat it, then she used her other hand to grab Sarah's coffee.

After she swallowed the bite of pastry, she took a long sip of the coffee. She hummed in satisfaction. Then she noticed that Chuck had a little chocolate on his mouth from when Sarah fed him a bite of the pastry earlier. She put the coffee down and reached up to Chuck's lips and ran her thumb over them, rubbing the chocolate away. Then she put her thumb in her mouth, looking at Chuck as she did so.

Chuck blushed all the way down his neck. He turned quickly to stare out the window. "So, Chuckles, Frost tells me you are actually an agent—you were one all along in Burbank. Couldn't get more than that out of her, but I'll just have to see if I can't…squeeze…a few more milliliters of info out of you." Chuck, still looking out the window, went pink on pink.

Sarah watched the entire show, grinding her teeth. She was about to say something when her phone beeped. Trinchina was leaving the safe house. It was time to relocate to the hotel. Sarah said as much to Chuck and Carina, but Carina continued to sip at Sarah's coffee.

"No worries. I went ahead and left my things with the valet at the hotel. No reason to schlep them all over Paris. I told them that my hubby and I would be checking in soon." She gave Chuck a brazen smile and ran her thumb across her own lips.

Chuck shot Sarah a desperate glance, but the woman behind the counter had seen that they were about to leave and had come to clear their table. Sarah wanted just to take Chuck's hand—but the mission had started, and Sartre and Marcel were in the building across the street, maybe looking out a window.

Sarah needed to talk to Carina. Frost had put Sarah in charge—and it was time for her to take charge of her willful friend. Any repeat of that _patisserie_ soft-core schmaltz and Sarah would punch Carina. She'd seen less aggressive versions of that performance before, directed toward men Sarah had shown even slight interest in. She hadn't found it endearing then, rather the opposite, although she had put up with it, maybe because Carina had never made a play for anyone Sarah was serious about. Because Sarah hadn't been serious about anyone at all until Bryce.

Carina knew about Bryce when Sarah was with him, but Sarah and Bryce together never crossed paths with Carina then. The one time she saw Carina during that period was during one of Bryce's solo missions, so Carina had to settle for photographs on Sarah's phone—and the very little Sara was willing to say about him or them as a couple.

Just as they got out of the taxi at the _Hôtel Plaza Athéné_ , Sarah got another text from Trinchina, providing the room number of the Deluxe Suite that would serve them as mission headquarters until they were finished. It was important that Chuck and Carina, _aka_ Mr. and Mrs. Charles Gilson, be in the right kind of lodging. So, officially, the Deluxe Suite belonged to the Gilson's, but as a matter of fact, Martin would be the person who stayed there, babysitting the equipment needed for the mission. Sarah was looking forward to making the sleeping arrangements clear to Carina.

As they entered the Suite, they found Martin attempting to speak French to Trinchina. She was in physical pain. "Martin, while I appreciate your brave efforts with my language, I ask that you please refrain. If you don't, I fear that the _Académie française_ will send their Perpetual Secretary here forcibly to deport you."

Martin turned to Chuck as Chuck walked in. "Did you hear that Chuck? The language police are going to get me," he reported with a wide smile. Chuck looked at Martin but did not respond. Martin's smile thinned, then vanished altogether. Sarah felt her spirits fall. Chuck had sunk back into his despondency. He hadn't been mean to Martin—but that was not the way their interactions went, and Martin was hurt by it.

Carina's eyes got big. "Morgan? Morgan? Is that you—don't tell me you are an agent too? Frost didn't mention you."

Sarah watched as Martin drew himself to his full height, and looked up and up at Carina. Then he responded. "Not agent, _analyst_ , and one of the best in the business. And it's not Morgan, it's Martin. Somehow, in Burbank, you got that right when you got that wrong. Martin. Maaar….Tennn." Despite his annoyed comment, he stared at Carina with the same loopy-loony, rapt, Jim-Carrey-as- _The Mask_ expression he'd worn in the Buy More.

Carina narrowed her gaze at him in response to his comment, but then resigned herself to his presence with her usual sangfroid. She jumped up and lightly landed in an armchair, plush and subtly gold-toned, like most of the furniture. The walls were a shade or two lighter than standard _crème brulee_. The room was beautiful, opulent even, despite the whirs and chirps from the devices Martin had piled on a table. Carina stretched her long legs out and glanced at Trinchina, lifting an eyebrow. "Hiya, Ilsa, how's tricks?" Trinchina's face did not change expression, but Sarah saw a flash of annoyance in her eyes. "Carina."

Trinchina turned her back on Carina and walked to Chuck. Sarah could see two stiff pieces of paper in her hand, with calligraphy on their fronts. "I have secured tickets for tonight's party at the clown school. It is for potential donors. Marcel and Sartre are expected to attend, to…as you Yanks would put it… _wine and dine_ the guests. There will be many guests. We are not expecting you to interact much with either Marcel or Sartre. In fact, you should keep any interaction short. As you both know," She looked at Chuck and then briefly turned her head toward Carina, "you are Charles and Cindy Gilson. Information about you has been seeded on the internet and on social media. Cindy is the wealthy one in the marriage—old family money. Against your family's wishes, you married…beneath you, married Charles." Carina laughed. "You've been married three years, but you, Cindy, are beginning to find your attention wandering…"

Carina laughed again. "Ha! The itch came four years early, I guess. Of course, if Charles here were really my husband, I imagine I could find ways for him to scratch _any_ itch. That's one tall scratching post, and I wouldn't mind him being _beneath me_..." Trinchina snuck a glance at Sarah, but Sarah swallowed the low growl she felt begin—and she kept her face composed. Trinchina knew that Sarah and Chuck were together. She was not sure what Carina was playing at, not sure about Sarah's non-response. But she went on.

"Yes, Cindy, in effect…You, Chuck, are a kept man, but worried about keeping your wife. The point of the evening is to get Carina, Cindy, in front of Sartre. If you talk to him or to Marcel, keep it brief and express an interest in making a sizeable donation to the school.

"We should meet back here at 4 pm to make sure everything is ready and to review our plan. Martin will keep track of things from here, although, Sarah, you will be in a van outside the school, running the op from there. All the video and audio will feed back to this room. Questions?" No one spoke. Carina smiled at Chuck and then made a defiant face at Sarah.

Sarah stepped forward, grabbing the pile of key cards from the table. "Ok. Martin, this is yours. Carina, this is yours. This one, Chuck, is for _us_." Carina's head bounced up; she'd been looking at her room number on the small envelope that held the key card. Sarah smiled widely at Chuck, and he seemed to snap out of his mood. He smiled back. Carina frowned. "And here are key cards for the Suite for you, Carina, and for me, and for Chuck. You have yours, Ilsa?" Ilsa nodded. "Alright, thanks, Ilsa. Everyone is on his or her own until this afternoon." Sarah took Chuck's hand, and without a backward glance headed for the door. "We'll be putting out the Do Not Disturb Sign. And we'll mean it," she called out lightly as she closed the door. The last sound from the room was an annoyed gasp. Carina.

}o{

Chuck smiled. He had wondered how long Sarah was going to let Carina run unchecked. He could tell in Burbank that Carina pushed Sarah's buttons. That parting shot showed it. Although Sarah did not share Chuck's discomfort with PDA, her native reticence to speak was even stronger where intimate matters were concerned. Jan and Liz—Liz especially—had cajoled her to a remark or two, a confession or two, but that was not Sarah's way. She loved intimate banter with him (and he with her) but that was banter was doubly intimate for her—about intimacy, and itself intimate, not to be shared, just for them and between them.

Sarah was shaking her head, looking at her watch. "Alright, Chuck. I don't intend for us to spend this free time in the room, although I admit that sounds inviting. But I know you want to see the Eiffel Tower and the few glimpses we've had haven't satisfied you. We can see views of it from here in the hotel. But, the rain has stopped, so let's go. We can grab sandwiches on the way— _jambone-beurre_ —and find a place near the tower to eat. I admit I'm hungry—Carina ate most of my breakfast." Chuck felt his spirits lift. He had always wanted to see the Eiffel Tower. And to see it with Sarah! He leaned in and kissed her smiling face quickly. He pulled back, but she reached out and put her hand around his neck and pulled him forcefully toward her. She gave him a long, deep, slow kiss, right there in the hallway. When he re-inhabited his body, he blinked at her. "Wow. What was that for?"

Sarah's face was glowing, but he could see the seriousness in her eyes. "For being you, Chuck. For rolling with the punches like you do. For reacting to Carina as you did." A playful smile grew on her face. "Maybe it was also a reminder…"

"A reminder?"

"Yes, I want you to remember that I am the only one allowed _to…squeeze…milliliters of info from you._ " Sarah said the last in a remarkable imitation of Carina, voice and intonation and posture. Chuck shook his head.

"What?" Sarah asked.

"I sometimes forget how good at that you are."

"At what?"

"The whole chameleon thing, how quickly and expertly you can become someone else." Chuck's admiration of her was patent in his voice.

"Oh," she grinned, "I thought you meant how good I am at…squeezing info from you." She made eye contact with him then her gaze danced away.

Chuck hugged her to him. "I don't think I ever forget how good at that you are. Ever."

She nodded emphatically. "You better never…"

He laughed. "You are my main squeeze, Sarah." He said this in a passable imitation of a B-movie gangster.

Sarah rolled her eyes, then pinned him with a sharp look. "I am your _only_ squeeze, Chuck Carmichael. Now let's go."

}o{

The rain did not resume, although the sky remained gray.

They walked to the Tower. Sarah had a bag containing sandwiches, apples and bottled water. Chuck was carrying an umbrella. On the off-chance that they might run into Marcel or Sartre, they kept touching to a minimum on the street. But when they finally finished the trek from the esplanade to the top, and after a careful look around at the other sightseers, they threw caution to the wind for a moment and kissed each other. Chuck's PDA inhibition took some time off.

 _It was all too much like a movie: Sarah, warmly, beautifully alive in his arms, her once-again blonde hair blowing against his face, the whole of Paris in living, technicolor panorama around them…Their embrace the only still point in Paris, in France, in Europe, on earth…The solar system encircling and circling them…(Screw Copernicus!)… Chuck could swear he heard the opening bars of a theme song…a power ballad…Celine Dion…(Celine Dion?)…_

When the kiss ended, he could see in Sarah's eyes that she'd had a similar experience. She was flushed and panting and tremulous. They leaned against each other, each steadying the other, until their breathing was normal enough to allow them to speak, to see anything other than each other.

For years, Chuck had hoped for so much from a visit to the Eiffel Tower. What he got dwarfed his expectations. He had never expected the Tower to take him to these heights. But, then again, for all those years, he'd never imagined being there with Sarah Walker. Sometimes, reality outsized fantasy in truly fantastic ways.

}o{

They ate their lunch in a relatively secluded spot from which they could still see the Tower. They were both quiet, moved by the kiss on atop the Tower and still thrall to its spell.

Sarah had a peculiar look in her eyes. Chuck saw it. "Sarah, what are you thinking about?"

She did not answer immediately. He could see her choosing her words. "Chuck, I know we've talked about the fact that I hope someday to have kids…" Chuck nodded carefully. "And it was _implied_ that I wanted you to be the father…" Chuck nodded again, more carefully. "Well, I don't want that to be merely implied; I want to make it explicit: Chuck, I hope someday to have kids with you."

Chuck smiled, and continued to nod carefully, not wanting to interrupt or distract her. He could tell she had not finished. She was twisting the ties from their sandwiches in her fingers—the only outward sign of nervousness or excitement. "I want someday for us to be a family, husband, wife, and kids…" Chuck felt himself warming all over. "When we get back to DC, Chuck, will you marry me?"

Chuck stalled for a second. "But, Sarah, my family…it's all such a mess. And the spy life. I thought it was you who was going to struggle to leave it, but now I find out that my entire life has been a spy life…I…I mean…"

Sarah put her hand on his arm for a moment. "Chuck, don't. None of that matters. We both have messy families. Let's work not to be one ourselves. I don't want to marry you just for the good times I know we will have, but because I know our bad times will be better if we are together, partners, always.

"We will get out of this life eventually. I know we will. But let's not put off what we can have now." Sarah held out a ring she had woven out of the two twist ties. "I know it's not all we might have hoped for, but it's more than enough. Will you marry me?"

Chuck held out his left hand, finger spread. "Yes, Sarah Walker, I will absolutely marry you." With a bright, wide smile, she slid the twist tie onto his ring finger.

"Look, Chuck, a perfect fit." She beamed at him; he re-beamed at her. "I can't believe I proposed and you accepted in a situation where we probably shouldn't seal it with a kiss." Her chin dropped in disappointment.

"Well, I just had one of the great kisses of my life up there," Chuck gestured with his eyes to the top of the Tower, "and I don't see why we can't call that our engagement kiss."

Sarah lifted her chin. "Me, either. And, tonight, after the op, we'll seal it with kisses…and more." She gave him a tantalizing smile.

"Fine by me, Ms. Walker."

"That's _Mrs_. Walker—or will be soon, _Mr_. Walker."

Chuck glanced down at his engagement ring. "You know, I can honestly say, I never imagined I would get an engagement ring." He grinned lopsidedly, holding his hand out at arm's length, moving it slowly, palm facing away from him, admiring the sandwich tie.

Sarah smacked him gently on the shoulder as she stood. "You are a goof. But I love you. And remember. You are literally and figuratively tied down now. Keep that in mind on the op, because Carina is going to put on the full-court press. You not only rejected her once, but she now knows we are still together. That's going to bring the worst out in her."

Chuck took a deep breath and stood too. "Am I allowed to tell her, you know, what just happened?"

Sarah pursed her lips. "I have to say, I'd like to be the one to tell her, although that's not going to be an all-fun-all-the-time conversation. But let's play tonight by ear—I'll be on the comms, so I will be in her ear and yours."

}o{

They got back with just enough time for Chuck to shower and put on his suit and for Sarah to make sure that she had all her weapons and equipment. She was profoundly tempted to just go _AWOL_ for the night when Chuck came out of the bathroom in his suit. He looked gorgeous. She immediately had to touch him, but knowing where ill-advised touching might lead—that it would reorient them from vertical to horizontal—she confined her hands to his tie, smoothing it unnecessarily. She felt a spike of jealousy that Carina would be on his arm.

Sarah had always hated the whole seduction aspect of the spy life and had maneuvered herself around it for the most part. One of the few decencies Graham had shown her, probably because she was so young when she started, was that he hadn't given her such assignments early on, and then later, when she'd proven how effective she was at other tasks, Graham had kept her at them. And she subtly reinforced Graham's focus in her conversations with him about missions. Yes, she had used her looks and her charm…and her charms…to her advantage on missions, but she'd never made those the focus of her missions, her primary 'weapons'. At some level, Sarah now realized, she had always felt that to take on seduction missions would have meant surrendering herself over to the spy life entirely, allowing it to invade her completely, to claim even her capacity for intimacy, for meaningful physical expression of her emotions. She was never going to give that away, and Graham could not make her give it away. She had let the spy life make her a liar almost everywhere. She was not going to let it make her a liar in bed, to make sex itself a lie.

It was funny in a dark way: spies worried constantly about being _compromised_ —but the spy life itself was one long compromise, forced or chosen compromises: with the truth, with what was right and wrong, with your sense of yourself. One reason the spy life almost always won, why spies ended up wrecked after typically short professional careers, is that the spy life insisted on compromise, and after the first, harangued the spy with a chorus of—"You compromised once, there, why not again, here? Just push the line a little farther out into the dark…" But a line you were always willing to move was a line in name only. It was not a real boundary, but just a decoration to make yourself feel better. She knew that Chuck called it the creep of the spy life, and she knew it was real.

She was in Paris, the city where she had 'passed' (what a joke of a term!) her Red Test with flying colors. She'd hardly gotten over that. That had been the beginning of the creep, the beginning of the compromises the spy life demanded, and of the ones it forbid. Many of the compromises the spy life forbid where compromises that tended to move the spy back toward the light…love, real connection, ties outside the spy life itself…compromises that worked against the compromises the spy life demanded. Compromises like the ring she had put on Chuck's finger.

"Sarah?" Chuck's voice broke into Sarah's reverie. "Are you ok?"

She smiled and smoothed his tie again, still unnecessarily. "Yes, just thinking. I'm not at all happy that Carina will be the one who gets to see you in this suit tonight."

Chuck grabbed her and squeezed her hard against him. "Well, she'll see me in it. But you're the one who'll see me out of it." He gave her a tantalizing smile. She kissed him and smoothed his tie again, this time it needed to be smoothed out. He took off his ring carefully and handed it to her. She slipped it into one of the key card envelopes and put it in her pocket. He went to the desk and got the wedding ring for the op, the one that matched the ring Carina would wear. He looked at her as he slipped it on.

"I hate having to put my real ring away to wear this fake thing." Sarah's vision got watery and she kissed her fiancé once more.

}o{

Sarah was seated in the back of the van parked a distance down the street from the school. Chuck and Carina both had comms in. Chuck was wearing plano glasses with a miniature camera mounted in them. Sarah had hoped that they would have such glasses for Carina, so that Sarah could not only see and admire Chuck during the op, but keep track of exactly where Carina's attention was focused. But they had only had the men's pair. So, Carina now had a good idea of when and what Sarah could see, and Carina was using the situation to her advantage.

"So, Chuckles, you and Sarah, I take it you spent the afternoon playing bake the _baguette_?"

Chuck looked away from Carina, scanning the room for Marcel or Sartre. Sarah knew he was hoping to get into and out of the party as quickly as possible.

"Well, Chuckles?"

"Our eating habits aren't really any of your concern, Carina." Sarah flinched. Chuck had dodged _into_ the attack.

"Eating habits? Now, now, isn't that interesting…Do you two eat at the same time, or do you like to take turns?"

Sarah didn't need Carina to be wearing glasses to know that Chuck was bright red. _Think, Chuck. Carina is Liz—but much taller and_ fully _weaponized._

She heard Chuck clear his throat repeatedly, then heard Carina: "Hair on your tongue, Chuckles?"

It was all Sarah could do not to yell at Carina. But then Carina continued, a sudden change in her tone. "So, Chuck, you two—you've been together since Burbank?" Sarah waited along with Carina for Chuck's answer.

"It's complicated, Carina. Maybe you should talk to Sarah. But, yes, I think we've been together since we met, basically."

"Oh, give me a break, Burbank Boy, spies don't fall in love, so, of course, they do not fall in love at first sight." Carina's tone was light, but it had an edge to it.

"I fell in love with her when I first saw her."

Sarah wanted to kiss him again. Carina huffed dubiously. "I'm sure you were _moved_ by her when you first saw her, that something grew several sizes that day, but it wasn't your heart." Sarah saw Carina flick her gaze toward Chuck's crotch, and she knew that she and Chuck were both supposed to see it. "C'mon, you aren't playing at being…who was it? Bartowski?...anymore. You are Special Agent Charles Carmichael. You've been to the Farm. You know the game. Most men with 20/20 vision are moved by Sarah when they first see her. But don't confuse erection with exaltation, Chuckles. And, anyway, haven't you figured it out—love ain't nothing but sex misspelled. I get it. You are giving it to her and she's enjoying having it given to her. But Sarah doesn't love you—no matter what mixed up shit is in your head or your heart. Sarah's not dumb enough to fall in love. She's sophisticated, not sophomoric." Sarah knew Carina was talking to her too, not just to Chuck.

Sarah's reaction to this little speech by Carina—at least out loud, into the comms, was to tell Carina to shut up and get ready. Sarah could see, since Chuck could see, that Sartre and Marcel were approaching them.

Sartre stepped ahead of Marcel and aimed his greeting at Carina. "Good evening. I take it you are Cindy Gilson? And this must be Charles." Sartre smiled, his white teeth appearing a bit predatorial to Sarah, although he was, she would grant, a handsome man. He was clearly delighted to find himself again near the woman he saw on the street earlier in the day.

"Yes, I'm Cindy and this is Chuck," Carina offered in response, her tone slightly airy, vacant. "How did you know us?"

Sartre's responsive smile was wider, practiced. "We took the liberty of looking you up on social media. I wanted to be able to recognize our newest potential donors. I take it you are both fans of the theatrical arts, and of mime, and clowning." Sartre was smooth, effortless. His English was perfect.

"Well," Chuck said, "I admit I have a touch of coulrophobia," Sarah nearly laughed aloud, "but Cindy tells me that your clowns don't wear that scary makeup."

"That's right. Le Coq trained clowns who did not rely on greasepaint. They do sometimes make use of masks, but that is not typical. You should come to the school when class is in session and see what we do. Marcel here," Sartre stepped aside so that Marcel could come fully into view, "is a teacher and would be happy to have you visit."

Marcel smiled. It looked a bit forced, and wholly bizarre over his mantis goatee. Likely he hated these functions, like most teachers, hating the feeling of having to sell what ought to be recognized as intrinsically valuable. "Oh, yes, I would be mostly happy to arrange a visit for Mr. Gilson."

Sartre, frowning, quickly added, "He means _most happy_ , not _mostly happy_." Sarah thought Marcel had known exactly what he was saying.

Chuck, seeing an opportunity, started asking Marcel about clowning, but kept his questions carefully at the neophyte level. Sartre, pleased to have Cindy's husband otherwise engaged, spoke to her. "So, Cindy, you and your husband seemed to be in a disagreement when we joined you. I hope all is well." _Like hell you do_ , Sarah thought.

"Oh, no, it was nothing, really. Chuck just gets into these ruts. He isn't very adventurous, despite his adventurous lifestyle. Daring on a yacht does not necessarily translate into daring in other…places, if you know what I mean."

"I believe I do, Cindy. Adventure, daring, these are the spices of life. Without them, anything can grow boring, mechanical, unsatisfying." Chuck had glanced away from Marcel, and he and Sarah could now see that Sartre had closed almost all the distance between himself and Carina.

"All I know is that I am up for anything, as long as my man is up for anything too…And I want him to be up for anything, all the time." Carina put her hand very briefly on Sartre's then took it away. She walked over to join Chuck and Marcel. Sartre followed her immediately, and a glance by Chuck showed that Sartre was taking the opportunity to enjoy the view from behind Carina.

"Ok, you two," Sarah observed, "the fish hasn't just noticed the bait, he's hooked. Get out of there as soon as you gracefully can. We've made sure that Cindy's phone number is on her RSVP. Sartre'll call."

Sarah looked at her watch. It wasn't all that late. She was so excited to celebrate their engagement with Chuck. She had brought that purple negligee from Burbank; she'd been saving it for a special occasion. It was time to refresh that screensaver of Chuck's. But she thought she had enough time for an overdue face-to-face with Carina.

* * *

 **A/N2** Wow! And that's our intro to Paris. Tune in next time for more bad guys, more _pain au chocolat_ and _café_ , and for a long heart-to-heart between Sarah and Carina. Chapter 27 "It's Not Peculiar". I'd really enjoy a review!


	27. Chapter 27: It's Not Peculiar

**A/N1** My sincere thanks to for sticking with this story as we close in on 170K words. I started this on a wing less than _a wing and a prayer_ , knowing it was going to go its own way, and perhaps not the way folks expected when I decided to expand the one-shot that lead to it, _Turning Tables_. I didn't expect so many to like it.

Thanks for reading and reviewing.

Don't own Chuck.

* * *

 **Turned Tables**

 _The Eiffel Tower High Mission_

* * *

Friday, February 22, 2008  
Paris, France  
 _The Hôtel Plaza Athéné_  
9:45 pm

* * *

CHAPTER 27 It's Not Peculiar

* * *

It was raining again.

Sarah had parked the van and gone into the hotel. She went straight to the front desk and put in an order with room service. She knew she had gotten back before Chuck and Carina. It would take the time to gather their coats from the coat check and then to hail a taxi. Everyone wanted one when the rain came. After finishing with her arrangements, she sent Chuck a text.

 _Champagne chilling in the room.  
Slip into something comfortable.  
I'm going to chat with Carina.  
Pour me a glass, please; be with you soon!_

As the team leader, Sarah had a room key for all the team rooms. She fished in her bag for the one to Carina's room. She found it and smiled tightly to herself.

She went to Carina's room and let herself inside. As usual, Carina was outrageously messy. Clothes and shoes and undergarments were spread, helter-skelter, around the room. Sarah had expected the clutter. She'd shared living quarters with Carina a few times before.

Sarah picked up a pair of pants and a blouse that had been tossed in a chair and she put them neatly on the bed. She sat down to wait.

She had asked Chuck to marry her. _She_ asked him.

Merely a couple of weeks ago or so, Chuck's offhand, singing mention of marriage had caused her to panic. As of this afternoon, she was engaged to marry him. She knew that the change between that night in their circus trailer and this afternoon was not really a change of mind—not if that meant she changed from not wanting to marry Chuck to wanting to marry him. No, the panic had been caused by her recognition that she wanted to marry Chuck, but that doing so would require her to let go of the spy life. She had not been sure she could do that—until her visit to Bryce. Whatever exactly had happened to her in that CIA supermax prison, in that conversation, it had been the final chapter of the Ice Queen Chronicles. She did not know what work she would do after the spy life, but she knew how good she was at learning, what a quick study she was, the panoply of skills she possessed. She would find work. Maybe she and Chuck could find work to do together.

Exposure to Frost had convinced Sarah that her own reluctance to leave the spy life was not because of her love of it, or because of unfulfilled spy ambitions. Those might have been part of Frost's story, but they were not hers. Oh, yes, there had been a time—while she was with the CATS, particularly—when she had thought _maybe_ she did love the spy life, _maybe_ she was all spy. Carina had a lot to do with that. But Sarah had realized she didn't, and she wasn't, even before the CATS unraveled. She recognized she wasn't Carina. They were friends, but they were different. She had stowed that recognition away, never really looking at it directly—but it was there, waiting, waiting, until Budapest, and Molly, and then until Burbank, and Chuck.

Her talk the morning after Chuck's song, her talk with Jan and Liz at the cookhouse, had slowly percolated through her, making a difference to how she felt about things. But maybe the most important moment had been the morning of the day after the Castle visit.

She had gotten up early that morning, feeling restless, sad for Chuck, and she stood barefoot in the kitchen, waiting for her coffee to finish brewing. She was going to wash the black dye out of her hair that day; she was so tired of it. She was looking forward to being herself again. As she thought about that, she flashed back to a conversation she had with Ellie, when she had tried to answer Ellie's question about the difficulty of leaving the spy life.

 _"That's a hard question for me. My entire adult life, more than that, really, has been in the Agency. I was…compromised…by this life without ever being given a chance to consent to it. I was a…killer, Ellie, before I understood what that means. I don't know if this will make any sense, but it is the best I can do: I didn't become a spy by choice and I am not sure I can stop being one by choice as a result…"_

 _Sarah paused, forcing herself to find words, images, something. "It's like being born with blonde hair. That's your natural color. You can, of course, get it colored, dye it. But that doesn't change the fact that you are a blonde. Nothing will change that—except age, I guess." Sarah stopped and Ellie laughed._

 _Sarah grinned for a second but then became serious again and went on. "That's sort of how I feel. I worry that I can't stop being a spy. I don't want to be a lifer. I want a life—a different life. But I worry that whatever I choose, it'll just be a dye-job. That underneath I will still be and will always be a spy."_

It had become clear to Sarah that her analogy was flawed. She hadn't chosen the spy life, true. But the spy life _was_ the dye job; a dye job she'd been given without consenting to it. She'd been dyed _spy_ : her hair was not naturally spy-colored. It was time to wash that dye out of her hair, her life, too.

Later that morning, in the bathroom, standing over the sink, watching the black dye spin down the drain, she knew that her desire the day before to propose to Chuck had not been idle. It was what she wanted—what she really, whole-heartedly wanted, with all that it meant. She might not fully know who she was underneath that dye job, but she was ready to find out—and she wanted Chuck to make the discoveries with her.

It was part of the story too that she was finally out of Graham's clutches. Hearing that he was missing had thrown her initially, but as the thought became more familiar, she began to feel his shadow lifting from her life. He'd been a fixture—and then he wasn't. She'd thought she felt lost at first, and she had a little, for a while, but then she realized she didn't really feel lost: she felt free.

Graham had been the very embodiment of the spy life for Sarah, its three-dimensional, living presence. Getting free of the spy life meant getting free of Graham. It wasn't that she hadn't known it or that Chuck hadn't. But Graham seemed inescapable, a permanent fixture. Somehow, irresistible and unmovable all at once.

But that had seemed less true in Batumi, when she decided against Graham's mission objectives. It had continued after Batumi, when she found out what Chuck had discovered about Graham. Then they had gone to Romney and she met Chris Parks. Parks had left the spy life behind. Sarah had never known a spy she admired who left of his or her own accord until Parks. Sarah had not been able to follow then, but Parks' example, and her reasons, had impressed themselves on Sarah. Parks had found someone underneath the spy. Sarah had to dig deeper, maybe, than Parks did—anyway, it had taken her more time, but she had found someone underneath the spy too. Who it was, she still hadn't finished sorting out, but she was certain she liked her—she was someone warmer, gentler, more responsive, capable of speaking for herself—someone who wanted a future with Chuck, a family with him. And who had said so, in the form of a proposal. There were still things to figure out, answers to find, and decisions to make, but that was ok.

She didn't need to know all the answers now. She didn't need to make all the decisions now. But she _had_ the crucial one, _made_ the crucial one. Eurydice followed Orpheus out of Hades—or far enough for the wanted transfiguration to occur. Now, Orpheus had trekked back into Hades, called back in by voices he could not ignore, and Eurydice was with him, but as a mortal now, not as a shade.

She supposed this all seemed like it had happened quickly. But it was better to say that the pace of her self-discovery had picked up. The time she had on the run with Molly, the time in Burbank, the time partnered with Chuck—it had been time when she had allowed herself to reckon with her past, her feelings during and about her past. She had come to see that she was not who she thought she was—the woman exhausted by a file in Graham's office.

The door to the room opened, pulling Sarah from her brown study, and Carina sashayed in, her green gown more stunning in person than it had been on the video screen earlier. She saw Sarah immediately but did not react to her noticeably. She walked to the dresser and put down her purse, took out the jade earrings she had been wearing, slipped off the matching bracelet, and then she kicked off her open-toed heels. She then looked directly at Sarah, and walked over to the bed. She picked up the clothes Sarah had folded and placed there, and she tossed them toward the head of the bed, so she could sit down.

"I figured I would find you here."

}o{

Carina had scooted over tight against Chuck in the back seat of the taxi. They'd gotten out of the clown school function without much more interaction with Marcel and Sartre. Chuck had seen that Sartre had never stopped watching Carina, however; he kept looking at her any time he had the chance. It'd taken forever to get their coats and to get a taxi, but they were on the way back to the hotel. Chuck wanted to be with Sarah, wanted finally to celebrate their engagement. But now he had Carina draped on him in the taxi.

He inched as far toward the rain-streaked window as he could. "Carina, I told you. I'm with Sarah."

"No, you aren't, you are with me. I'm right here, and I tell you, that suit and tonight's flirting, all of it has made me very…warm. If you give me your hand, I can show you." She leaned against him hard and grabbed his wrist. Chuck twisted it away, violently. He glared at her.

"Carina, damn it, no. And 'no' means _no_ , no matter who says it. No! I am I love with Sarah Walker. You say she is not in love with me. Even if that were true, it doesn't change how I feel. I don't love her because I believe she loves me—although, despite you, I do believe it—I love her because she is _Sarah_. So, take your hands away from me. I like you. You are Sarah's oldest friend. I want to be your friend too. But if this goes any further…" Chuck could feel his voice shaking with anger.

Carina scooted away a little and looked at Chuck curiously. She put her hands in the air, palms toward Chuck. "Ok, ok. I've backed off. But I am just trying to help you, Chuckles. I get that Sarah's gotten under your skin. I get that you believe you are in love with her. I understand how you could think it. She's amazing—smart, beautiful. Maybe you aren't cut out to be a spy. Maybe you somehow slipped through the Farm and through a few years on the job. But if you knew what's up, you'd see that what I am doing is for your own good. Take me back to my room. Throw me on the bed. Peel this green gown off me and find out what I wore under it just for you. Something gauzy and all-but-transparent. I'm very good, Chuck, very, very good. I have perfected this…activity. One night with me and you'll be able to see Sarah clearly again."

"Carina, stop." Chuck was exasperated.

"No, Chuck, you need to hear this. Sarah needs you to hear it. She is playing you. But even worse, she is playing herself, evidently. I know that woman. If you repeat this, I will deny it—but she is the best spy I have ever seen. She knows no other life; she has no interest in any other life. I mean…she sometimes sort of thinks she does, but she really doesn't. She's uber-focused on the job. She has no time for anything else. Anyone else. Hell, she doesn't even take time off between missions. She's the Energizer Bunny with a scoped rifle. I have no idea why she's decided to lead you on, but that's what is happening.

"Take me up on my offer," Carina's voice dropped to a sugary coo, "and you will have the best night of your life. I will make Sarah Walker optional for you by morning." Her tone hardened a bit. "You'll be better off and so will she, even if she is pissed for a while. But I will take the heat.

"And don't worry about the mission. Sarah's the consummate professional, she won't allow anything to interfere with the mission. I've taken men she was interested in before, as I think I told you in Burbank. She always copes with it easily enough. When I left Burbank, I admit, I thought maybe she was into you for real—but later, after reconsidering it, I realized I must have been wrong about that. I've only known her to be into one guy for real—Larkin, super spy—and, Chuckles, you are cute-ish, and you did your job well tonight, I admit, but you are no Bryce Larkin, super spy.

"So," the sugary coo returned, "take me up on my offer, Chuckles. Throw off Walker's shackles." Carina reached down and took the hem of her skirt in her hand, and then began to slide it up her leg, revealing first bare ankles, then calves…

Chuck gently put his hand on Carina's hand. "No. Absolutely, no." She frowned and dropped the hem of her skirt. "Believe what you want, Carina. Maybe I am wrong about Sarah. Maybe I am wrong about myself. I don't think so. But I am going to go on being wrong, if I am wrong."

The taxi finally reached the hotel. Chuck threw a handful of Euros at the driver was out the door before the taxi had come to a complete stop. He looked back over his shoulder. It had taken Carina a moment to get her dress adjusted and to slide out. Chuck's long legs had taken him deep into the lobby before she could start after him. He got on the elevator and the doors shut while Carina was still crossing the lobby. Chuck leaned against the wall of the elevator and let his head fall back against it. He closed his eyes and shook his head. He reached into his pocket and got his phone. He'd felt it vibrate at about the same time as Carina started her skirt-lifting tactic.

He read the text from Sarah. He smiled to himself. It was time to forget Carina and to focus on his fiancée. He remembered the cover ring on his finger. He yanked it off and put it in his pocket, frowning. He'd have to tell Sarah about tonight. And he'd have to do it tonight. She'd predicted Carina's onslaught, but still, he couldn't _not_ tell her.

}o{

"Why is that?" Sarah asked, crossing her legs.

"Because we have a history. Because I know you. And because I have never seen you act like this around anyone before." Carina had inflected 'act' in a strange way, somehow leaving the word hovering between meanings, between _mere action_ and _putting on an act._

Carina stood up and went to the minibar. She grabbed one of the tiny bottles of scotch. Waving it at Sarah, she asked if Sarah wanted one. Sarah shook her head. She was waiting for champagne with Chuck—but she didn't explain that to Carina.

Carina poured the bottle into a glass and returned to her seat on the bed. Sarah was determined to wait her out; she said nothing.

After a few sips of the scotch, Carina went on, clarifying. "You act like you are actually in love with the nerd-spy. I can't understand that. I never saw you and Bryce together, but I don't recall anything in your eyes when you told me about Bryce like I saw in them today when you were around Chuck. What are you playing at, Blondie? Why are you working so hard to make Chuck believe you two are…well, _romantically_ involved?" Carina's eyes narrowed, squeezing the word 'romantic'.

"I'm not _playing_ at anything, Carina." Sarah's answer was flat, matter-of-fact. "I'm here on the mission with my partner. No acting."

"He's not just your partner. He never said so exactly, but you clearly implied it when you left the suite. You two are sleeping together."

Sarah confirmed it without ceremony. "Yes, Carina, we're sleeping together."

"And you must know that nerd-spy is convinced he is in love with you. Shit, he may _be_ in love with you—that's how hopeless he is. And get this," Carina went on, breaking into a quiet, head-shaking laugh, "he believes _you_ are in love with him. I can't figure out why you'd want him to think that, although after watching you around him today, and hearing you in my ear tonight, I have a pretty good idea why he does.

"But look at you—I'm sure he'd be happy to…keep your feet warm," Carina arched an eyebrow, "you know, without the sticky-Valentine eyes when you look at him or that honey-warm voice when you talk to him. You _are_ playing at something, Sarah, and I want to know what it is." There was a foot stomp in Carina's voice, as well as a tincture of desperation. She waited for Sarah to speak. When Sarah did not, Carina leaned forward. "I thought you were the one who didn't do seduction missions..."

"Enough, Carina! I am not playing at anything. I did not seduce Chuck. Chuck and I are more than partners. We live together now in DC. We are exclusive. Committed. I have real feelings for him." Sarah wanted to go on and say: _And I am hopelessly, unutterably in love with him, and he is going to be my husband._ But she didn't.

Better to let Carina come to this stepwise, little by little. This much was going to be hard enough to bring Carina to believe, to understand. Sarah's dad had told her lots of false things when she was little, but one true one was that people take time stably to believe what they do not want to believe. You should keep finding ways to repeat it. Because, even if they believe for a minute or two, they'll backslide quickly.

Carina leaned backward. She blinked several times in succession, as if Sarah had gone out of focus for her. Her mouth worked, stopped, worked again—but no words came. She drained the rest of her scotch and then put the glass on the floor at her feet.

After a long sigh, she stood up and turned around, motioning for Sarah to unzip the gown. Sarah uncrossed her legs, stood up, and did. Carina clasped the gown to her and walked to the closet. She stepped out of it and put it carefully on a hanger. After hanging it up, she retrieved a tattered hoodie and a pair of jeans. She put them on over her plain white underwear and came back to sit on the bed.

"Ok, so you are 'living with' the nerd-spy. And you have 'real feelings' for him." Carina dropped her hands, busy just a moment before making air-quotes, to pull her bare feet up beneath her. "So, spill. How the hell did this happen?"

}o{

Sarah took a minute.

She took a breath.

She spilled.

The version of events she gave to Carina was redacted. It started in Burbank, not Budapest. She omitted details along the way, but she told Carina the heart of the story. That Chuck was pretending to be the Intersect to both lure Fulcrum into the open and to test Sarah's loyalties. That she had thought she was protecting the Intersect but that, eventually, after Bryce's visit to Burbank and subsequent capture, she'd been cleared of suspicion and told what had been going on.

She told Carina that Chuck told her he loved her and wanted to be her partner. She took Carina on a whirlwind talking tour of Batumi, Romney and Circus Maximus. Sarah mostly stuck to outward events and did not spend a lot of time talking about her feelings or Chuck's. She revealed that Frost was Chuck's mother, and told Carina briefly about Ellie. But she omitted everything about Stephen and Castle and Martin's role in it all. She also left out what had happened earlier in the day, her proposal and Chuck's acceptance.

Carina listened in growing discomfort, Sarah knew. As the story progressed, Carina could see a different Sarah coming into view, a Sarah that Carina had known was possible all along, but that she had worked to keep from coming into view, a Sarah that frightened Carina far more than the Ice Queen had.

"So," Carina commented weakly, after Sarah had finished and silence had descended on the room, "you really do have real feelings for Chuck. You really are living with him…" Sarah slowly nodded. "And it's not just about those long, dexterous fingers of his?"

Sarah fought to keep her mind in Carina's room, rather than letting it drift to hers, where she knew Chuck was waiting for her. "I really do and I really am. And let's keep his fingers out of this…"

"I doubt you ever say that to him," Carina smirked. Sarah did not react. "What's the long-term plan, Blondie? The thing with Bryce fizzled. Spies are not typically high-fidelity folks, to put it mildly. What about down the line? What I said about Charles Gilson tonight to Sartre….I meant that for you too, you know." Sarah nodded once. "Chuck's a spy. I get that he can even be a good one if he wants. But he's low-octane, Sarah, tame. You are high-octane, a CAT. And you are Graham's Enforcer; he's not going to accept Chuck as your long-term partner."

Sarah then told a shocked Carina about Graham's disappearance. Frost had told Chuck on the phone that news of Graham's disappearance—carefully crafted news—would be out tomorrow, so Carina would know some of it soon enough. Sarah explained the situation to Carina.

"You are not just living with Chuck, his partner, but you two are now working for Frost, his mother? This gets weirder and weirder, Sarah girl. Are you even a CIA agent, officially?" Carina was flabbergasted.

Sarah shrugged one shoulder. "I guess so. On paper, anyway. But I don't answer to the Interim Director. If Graham returns, I won't answer to him anymore. My chain of command is no longer the same. Frost works with, or works for, people more powerful than Graham."

Carina looked lost in thought. "Everything's changed, hasn't it, Sarah." Her voice was small. She got up and went over to the dresser. She picked up her purse and took something out of it. She returned and handed it to Sarah. It was a small digital recorder. "Hit 'Play', Sarah."

 _"Carina, I told you. I'm with Sarah…"_ Chuck's voice.

The recording played to the end, to the taxi's arrival at the hotel. Sarah hit 'Stop' and looked at Carina. Her gaze was deeply angry and highly puzzled. "Carina, you do not have on gauzy, all-but-transparent underwear. What the hell are you playing at? What did you think was going to happen?"

"Nothing, to be completely honest. I tried…in Burbank, Sarah, to see what was up with Chuckles. And there, even though he hadn't known you long, and even though you two were not sleeping together, he shut me down. When I realized you were now sleeping together, I figured he would certainly shut me down. But Frost's telling me he was an agent made me wonder if maybe he turned me down in Burbank for professional, not personal reasons." She looked at Sarah. "I thought maybe he turned me down because of whatever mission it was he was on, not because he had feelings for you. So, I thought I'd take another run at him, when he was no longer pretending not to be an agent."

"And what would you have done if he had said yes tonight?" Sarah asked, fearing the answer but needing to know it.

"I'd have banged him silly, and so done you and me both a favor. I'd have gotten to use that tall scratching post, and you'd have known he wasn't really into you—because he would've been into me." Carina's familiar, brazen smile slowly claimed her face.

Sarah's anger returned. She felt herself redden. She couldn't stop it. Carina saw it. "And there it is. Ok, Sarah, I believe you. You are serious about this guy, Sarah, I can see that. I've done this sort of thing to you before, but you were always able to remain in control of your reaction. Not just now. I never thought I'd see that, honestly." Carina's expression was pleased and disappointed. Pleased for Sarah, Sarah realized, but disappointed for Carina. There was a brief chaser of envy.

A moment passed. Sarah tried to sort out her reactions to all this. But then Carina's brazen smile melted away, leaving her looking vulnerable.

"Sarah, I didn't expect anything would happen tonight. I knew…when I wiped the chocolate from his mouth this morning, and it got even clearer as the day went on…And, Sarah, though you didn't think to ask yet, I recorded all that because, if he had said yes, I would not have 'banged him silly'. I'd have shut him down, and then I would have told you, and let you hear the recording if you wanted. Maybe in Burbank, I would have slept with him—because things between you two were in flux there. But they aren't here. I wouldn't have done that to you. I may have a funny sense of what it means to be one, but you are my _friend_ , Sarah."

They stared at each other awkwardly for a few seconds. "Oh, by the way," Carina volunteered at last, "that line about you being the best spy…just me sweet-talking the nerd-spy."

"Right," Sarah countered. "Of course."

}o{

Sarah stood outside her room and gathered herself. The talk with Carina had been the rollercoaster she expected, but expecting it did not minimize its steep climbs and sudden drops. Nothing with Carina was easy. What Carina would believe by the light of day remained to be seen. But that was tomorrow's problem. Inside her room was her husband-to-be. It was time to put everything else away.

She let herself in. Chuck was sitting on the bed in one of the hotel robes. He had a glass of champagne in his hand. Another glass was sitting on the nightstand on her side of the bed. He was reading a _Justice League of America_ comic. On the cover was the expected, barely costumed woman (in this case a blonde). The issue was "A Brief Tangent". Chuck's face showed embarrassment. He closed the comic and put it on his nightstand.

Sarah bent over and kissed him as she passed. "Back in a jiffy." 'Jiffy'—one of Chuck's words, now one of hers. In the bathroom, she quickly took off her clothes and then put on the lavender negligee. She walked into the room.

Chuck stood when she came in and his robe fell open, testifying to his reaction to her. He tried to close the robe. "Um…Sarah…I need to tell you something about tonight."

"I know, sweetie, Carina tried to seduce you, and you shut her down." She smiled at him, to make it clear that she was not upset with him—much, much the opposite.

"Oh. Oh! How did you know?"

"Carina recorded it and then played me the recording." She saw Chuck boggle. "It's her twisty spy stuff." Sarah paused, thoughtful. "Her way of having a bit of an existential spy crisis."

"That's…um…peculiar." Chuck offered, struggling for a response.

"I guess...maybe…maybe not, if you know her well. It's not peculiar; it's Carina." Sarah's tone made it clear they were done with Carina for the night. Recapturing her tantalizing smile of earlier in the day, Sarah stepped to Chuck and opened his robe, taking their celebration into her own hands.

}o{

Early the next day, everyone gathered in the suite for _café_ and pastries. Sarah knew she was glowing. Chuck certainly had brightened. Carina looked to have had a long night. Her glance at Chuck and Sarah was tired, reproachful.

Martin bit into a _pain au chocolat_. His eyes bulged. He savored it and when he finished the bite, he declared to everyone and no one: "Pastries for breakfast. France is genius!" At just that moment, Carina's phone—Cindy's phone—rang. She gestured for silence.

"Hello? Oh, yes, Mr. Sartre, I certainly _do_ remember you. Thank you, my husband likes me in that color. Tomorrow afternoon? Yes, I think we are free. Lunch at your country home? And spend the night? Well, I…we are on holiday. Let me check." She waited in silence for a few seconds. "Yes, Chuck and I would love to come. What a kind, thoughtful invitation. Oh, think of it as an adventure?" Carina rolled her eyes at the room. "I _will_. We will. See you tomorrow."

After the call, mission prep shifted into high gear. Trinchina produced plans of the house and a description of it from a French agent who had been in it a couple of times. Martin started gathering tech and equipment. Chuck helped him and seemed to be willing enough to do so, even if there was still a palpable chill between the two men. Sarah knew the two needed to talk, but it was going to have to happen on its own.

They all worked steadily through the morning. After a break for lunch, they returned to the suite to finalize their plans. A little while after that, the news made its way onto French television that Langston Graham, the Director of the US CIA, was missing.

* * *

 **A/N2** I know, a shorter chapter, but still chock-full of vitamins and minerals. A little light on bad guys, but I decided on two shorter rather than one longer chapter, so the next one will be heavier on bad guys. Tune in next time for a trip into the French countryside—Chapter 28 "Too Much Spice". A review before you leave, please? [Rattles a few coins in a tin cup...]


	28. Chapter 28: Too Much Spice

**A/N1** Here we go again. Lots to do. Thanks so much for reading. I'd love to hear from you.

Chapter title here, like last time, is a song title taken from a Husker Du song.

Don't own Chuck

* * *

 **Turned Tables**

 _The Eiffel Tower High Mission_

* * *

Sunday, February 23, 2008  
 _The Hôtel Plaza Athéné_  
Deluxe Suite  
4:00 pm

* * *

CHAPTER 28 Too Much Spice

* * *

The news of Graham's disappearance was—as Frost had told Chuck it would be—carefully filtered. The time of his disappearance was left vague, as were the circumstances. There was an unmistakable hint, never made fully explicit, that perhaps the disappearance was the result of illness, mental illness. The Interim Director spoke for a few seconds, talking about Graham's long career, his selfless dedication and the pressures of his job. She implied—again without explicitly saying anything—that perhaps Graham had simply taken an early, unscheduled retirement. All things considered, the news was brief and seemed somehow neither news of a scandal nor of endangerment. It would have been consistent with the story for Graham to have been found wandering harmlessly somewhere in a Botanical Garden.

Sarah turned away from the television with a huff. She was freshly amazed at how successfully those in power could scrub a story, control the information that was available to the public. The irony of Graham's disappearance being 'handled' as Graham had 'handled' the disappearance of others was not lost on Sarah. She couldn't help but wonder what had happened to the man. The spy gods gave, the spy gods took away.

She noticed Chuck watched her. He smiled. He looked up, as it were toward their room upstairs, and she knew he was thinking about their celebration last night, and reminding her. She enjoyed the reminder, but she did not need it. She had been having a hard time all day staying focused—she kept re-living specific moments, specific kisses, specific touches. Love, she found, intensified pleasure, gave it dimensions it simply lacked without love. It made the pleasure somehow sharable, not just hers, not just his, but theirs. It was bigger even than them both, and they could live, and move, and share themselves in it.

She made herself walk out onto one of the suite's balconies. She had gotten embarrassingly warm. As she stood there, she felt Chuck's hand ghost onto and then away from the small of her back. "I love you, Mrs. Walker."

She looked around; they were alone. "I love you too, Mr. Walker."

"Are you ok—did the news about Graham bother you?"

"No, although I have to give someone credit. That was the least worrisome report about a missing person I have ever heard." She shook her head.

"I know. I wonder if…Dad came up with it?"

She turned to face him. "I hadn't thought about that as a possibility. Do you think he would be involved in that sort of thing?"

"I really don't know. Maybe. He seems to be very much involved in all this Ring stuff, and despite that white-washed news report, Graham's disappearance is almost certainly Ring-related. So, again, maybe." He shrugged slightly, then put his hands on the railing and leaned forward, looking at the darkening city. He gave her a soft glance. "The lights will be on soon. The city will sparkle." She turned back around and put her hand over his. He leaned toward her…

"Damn, you two. How hard is it…Wait, wrong beginning…How _difficult_ is it to control yourselves?" Before Chuck could turn back, Carina pinched him. "Nice, Sarah. Lucky girl. I should get so lucky…"

Sarah's hand lashed out faster than Carina could anticipate. She had Carina's wrist vise-gripped. "You and I talked last night, Carina. We're not playing this game. I never liked it; I hate it now." Carina paled visibly. But, after a moment, she shook her wrist out of Sarah's grip.

"Ok, Blondie. Who knew romance made you so touchy?" Carina smiled at them both, but it was a smile forced at the edges. She went back into the suite. Chuck faced Sarah. "Are we going to let these folks know that we are engaged? Maybe, if we do, Carina will stop pushing."

Sarah flashed her blue eyes at him. "Maybe she'll push harder." She paused. "I want to tell everyone, Chuck, I really do. And even though I know you are still…angry, I especially want to tell Ellie and Devon and Mary." Chuck frowned, but Sarah could tell he was fighting it. She knew he was divided. He wanted Ellie and Devon to know; he wanted Martin to know; he also sort of wanted Frost to know…even if part of him wanted to keep it from all of them as payback. After a moment, he nodded, a grin growing slowly.

"You make the call on when we tell, baby." He looked like he had stepped out on an icy pond and thought he heard a crack. Sarah narrowed her eyes, turning the word over in her head. 'Baby'. 'Baby'?

"Vetoed?" He clearly expected a yes.

"No, accepted, sweetie. I am surprised—but I…like it. One thing, though—never, ever around Carina, ok? Deal?"

"Deal."

}o{

Chuck went to get coffee for everyone. It was going to be a late night. Coat on, Chuck headed down the hallway to the elevator. He stepped on and turned around. Just before the doors closed, an arm shot into the elevator and sent the doors back. Martin joined Chuck. He said nothing. He just leaned against the opposite side of the elevator, staring at his shoes.

Chuck wanted to… _what_? Yell at Martin? Punch him? No. He realized he just felt tired, empty. He just wanted to know. He looked at Martin. "So, how did you get involved with the Intersect, with Dad, Martin? Were you already involved when Mom introduced us?"

A shadow of pain and shame crossed Martin's face but he stood up straight and looked Chuck in the eye. "Yes, and it sucked. I never wanted to keep this secret from you, man. But your Mom!" Martin's hands clenched in frustration. "She's scary, Chuck, damned scary."

Despite his anger and frustration, Chuck laughed softly. "She sure the hell is. Try growing up with her around…"

Martin shivered. "Don't wanna go there, Chuck…" He changed his tone and as the elevator doors opened, he began. "I guess, for a long time, really, until…Ellie joined the team, Doc's…Stephen's…'lucid' spells were irregular. Once, they worried that he would never have one again. During those…weeks, I guess…your Mom needed an analyst. Doc had seen some of my work and commented on it to her during a past 'lucid' spell. He said I saw things too. So, she had the idea of bringing me in and using me during Doc's dark times. So, I started working with her, going to Castle. Ellie joined the team and Doc came around.

"Those were crazy times. Ellie was working like a mad woman to fix Doc—that sister of yours, Chuck, she is amazing—but she was in a running firefight with your Mom. About Doc, what had happened to him, about you and keeping the secret. Frost forbid Ellie telling you, but, on top of that, Doc began to respond to her treatment, and I think Ellie couldn't stomach the thought of walking away from him. Between us, although I have mentioned this to Ellie, I don't think it was just the treatment Ellie provided Doc that helped him; I think at some level he recognizes her voice. He came back to her. She denies it, but sometimes I see her watch him and I know she wonders." Martin got sort of misty. "Anyway, Ellie suspected that Frost would move him if she thought Ellie planned to tell you. Frost would have too, I believe. Your Mom's one complicated piece of work."

Chuck for a moment forgot his anger and frustration with Martin. "God, I know. Why couldn't I see Dad? Why go to such lengths to keep me from knowing when Ellie did?" They went through the lobby door and out onto the street.

"Well," Martin offered, his tone thoughtful, "Frost kept trying to justify it as a professional decision. Ellie was not there as her daughter, as Doc's daughter, but as the best doctor available…" Chuck shot Martin a dark look. "Whoa, dude, I'm not defending her, just reporting. She made Ellie sign all sorts of paperwork, like me, basically saying that if she told, she'd be guilty of treason. There was no professional reason for you to be there. But I don't pretend to understand your Mom, man."

"That makes two of us. So, why did she introduce us?" They reached the _café_ and went inside. Before Martin answered, Chuck gave the man the order for the coffees. As they waited, Martin answered. "I'm not sure. I think she saw that we would be buddies, and a think she felt really guilty about the situation—I mean like _really_ guilty—and so introducing us eased her conscience…"

"Do you really think she has one of those—a conscience—at all, Martin?"

"I don't know what to say to that, Chuck, except to say that I am absolutely sure she loves her family. She loves you guys, your dad, Ellie, you, but she's never known what to do about it. I won't defend what she's done, Chuck, or defend all her motives—but love, real love, is there, it's just…twisty."

Chuck thought about Carina and Sarah. He paid the man for the coffee. Martin grabbed a cardboard tray, as did Chuck, and they started back. "You know, maybe that stupid saying, 'Spies don't fall in love' should be amended to 'Spies do fall in love, they just land horribly.'" Both men were silent on the walk back to the hotel.

As they waited for the elevator, Martin turned to Chuck with a curious smile. "Say, Chuck, Sarah Walker is glowing today. Sarah Walker. Wanna tell me what's up with that? I mean she looked happy at the circus, but…wow!"

"You aren't the only one who can keep a secret, Martin." Chuck answered, a little more sharply than he intended.

In a rebuked tone, Martin went on. "Um, right. Say, about Carina. Is she…you know, romantically involved with anyone?"

The form of the question made Chuck smirk. "'Romantically involved'? I'd say that's a big _no_."

"You know, I know she was just pretending on that double date we had in Burbank. Hell, all four of us were. But I thought maybe I saw something in her eyes, a little something, that maybe was real or wanted it to be real."

Chuck shrugged, shaking his head a little. "I wish I knew what to tell you, Martin, except…be careful. That woman is nearly twice your size, and every inch deadly."

Martin's eyes became dreamy, his voice soft. "I know, I know…But what a way to go…"

}o{

Chuck was seated in the back of the Mercedes with Carina. Martin was driving. They were headed into Île-de-France, into, if not the countryside exactly, then a posh, garden-district suburb of the city. Samuel Sartre's massive house-cum-mansion was there. Chuck reviewed it in his head. Three floors, built originally in the 18th century. Six bedrooms and six full baths. Gardens. A terrace. Wine cellar. Grotto. Luxurious, even decadent. Valued at a little over twenty-seven million dollars. And it was just one of Sartre's several homes in France, Europe, and the world. Chuck laughed to himself at Carina's comment when they'd been looking over Sartre's homes. "Anyone with that many mansions is compensating for something…"

Sartre had an apartment in the city too, but he evidently preferred to retreat to the Île-de-France whenever he could, especially when he was running this wife-stealing operation he seemed to enjoy so much. Chuck realized that he hadn't done anything to make Sartre dislike him at the school event the other night, but luckily Carina had proven more than equal to the task of attracting and anchoring Sartre's interest—or, to call it what it was, his lust. If necessary, Chuck would annoy Sartre today, but it wasn't clear it would be necessary. Carina had dressed carefully and imaginatively, knowing her part in the op. She had on an emerald blouse and a black skirt that fell just below her knees, but was slit along one side. She had added black, high-heeled pumps with small emerald bows. The outfit was, at first glance, simply attractive, yet on second glance, it was subtly sexy.

Chuck was still annoyed with Carina about the taxi and the pinching, but he was sorry about her part in this op. Sartre would objectify her no matter what she was wearing: Sartre was a poster boy for The Male Gaze. But Chuck hated that the job made Carina complicit in that gaze, making her present herself as no more than an offering to male pleasure. True, she was using Sartre's gaze against him, and there was a grim satisfaction in that, Chuck conceded. But, still.

It always upset Chuck to have to do evil so that good might come. But that was the pith of the spy life, of almost all of it. He understood the counter-claim: the spy was facing people who were willing to do evil so that more evil, often worse evil might come. But the end did not justify the means, and that was what the spy life forced you to contend. There was no dodging the fact, though, that if you did evil so good might come, then, despite the end, _you did evil_.

You could try to finesse that fact by abacusing away at a putative utilitarian calculus, but there were no natural numbers for calculating good and evil—you were always ultimately just making shit up. You couldn't even order goods or evils as you might order rocks in degree of hardness (what was that called Chuck asked himself, then remembered: oh, yeah, the Mohs Scale of Mineral Hardness), in some _this-scratches-that-but-isn't-scratched-by-it_ order. But if you couldn't do that, you surely couldn't do actual math with goods and evils and then pretend you'd _calculated_ 'The Greater Good'.

Chuck shook his head. No time for drifting off into those issues. He needed to focus.

He and Carina would not have any backup handy. Sarah and Ilsa would be in the van, but there was no place to park it unobtrusively near Sartre's home. Comms would work, but help would be several minutes away at best. Given that Chuck would be spending a lot of time with Sartre, it made little sense for Chuck to have his comm in. Carina's long hair obscured hers. Sarah would only be able to talk to Carina. Martin would take the Mercedes back to the city and coordinate from there. He'd return tomorrow to drive Chuck and Carina home.

Sartre's study—and his personal computer and his safe (according to installation receipts Ilsa had tracked down) were upstairs, on the second floor. The plan—a loose one so that it could respond rapidly to change—was for Carina to allow Sartre to commandeer her, separate her from Chuck, and for her to give Chuck at least fifteen minutes to get to the study and find whatever he could find. But there were complications, of course. Sartre had a staff—a butler, a couple of maids, a cook, and two guards—all of whom were typically in the house during the day. He might also have invited other people to his home—it was impossible to predict if he would, or who they might be, if he did. So, even if Carina got Sartre out of the way, there were still hurdles to clear.

Chuck knew that Sarah and Ilsa were behind them in the van. They were at the point where the van and the car would separate. As Ilsa pulled past them in the van, Chuck saw Sarah in the passenger window. She blew him a quick kiss. Carina saw it and scoffed. "Shit, Chuckles, you took a vorpal sword and ruined it, turned it into a damn pink ribbon…"

Chuck waved at Sarah and smiled before he responded. "No, I haven't. I haven't ruined anyone. Sarah's the strongest person I know. If she's changed, it is because she was willing to change. And she is still every bit as dangerous as she ever has been."

Carina rolled her eyes as the Mercedes rolled to the front of Sartre's home. Sartre was standing outside, waiting, wearing an expectant smile. Chuck got out and greeted Sartre, then he carefully stepped away from the car door so that Carina could exit. She made sure she got out in such a way that the slit in her skirt allowed her long leg to be fully exposed. Chuck could almost feel Sartre's temperature rise. Sartre noticed Chuck looking at him, and dialed back his leer, but Chuck frowned, making sure Sartre noticed the frown. Sartre turned his full attention back to Carina, stepping in front of Chuck and taking her hand, helping her from the car. She gave Sartre a complicated little smile, one that conveyed that something significant but private was passing between Sartre and her. Chuck shook his head inwardly. She was a past master at this game. Sartre, the player, was about to be played.

}o{

Later, after dinner, Sartre stood chatting quietly with Carina in the library. Each had a wine glass in hand. Chuck, of course, was there too, but not now part of the little chat. Sartre had not invited anyone else to his home, so it was just the three of them, although one of Sartre's security guards was posted outside the library door. Chuck had again indicated his displeasure with Carina's reactions to Sartre's attentions—he'd done it subtly, but Sartre had, again, noticed, and Chuck's apparent displeasure was clearly adding to Sartre's enjoyment of the evening, to his anticipation of where it might lead. Chuck had wandered off after his whispered grousing to Carina, and was examining books on the library's shelves. Behind him, he could overhear the chat.

"So, Cindy, has the adventurousness of your holiday risen?" Sartre asked, his smooth voice caressing the question, especially its final word.

He heard Carin's tintinnabulating giggle. "Unfortunately, no, I've had…very little…to keep me busy. Sometimes a girl's left to her own devices."

Chuck could hear Sartre leaning toward Carina in Sartre's modulation of his voice. "Perhaps a volunteer could be found, someone who could fill your desire for adventure." Chuck wanted to turn around and punch Sartre's white smile, but he stayed focused on the spine of a volume of Montaigne. After a moment, he pulled it from the shelf and turned to face Sartre and Carina. Sartre stepped back quickly, his face changing expression.

"Say, is this the volume with that essay, 'That the Profit of One Man is the Damage of Another'?" Chuck directed a bland, naïve look at Sartre, whose face showed a flash of angered chagrin. _Score one for the eidetic-memory man. They should_ so _have one of those in the Justice League of America._

Sartre forced his smile to return. "No, I believe that essay is in one of the other volumes, perhaps volume two." Chuck shrugged and put the book back, but talking as he did so. "Wasn't Montaigne the mayor of a French city? Bordeaux, I think?"

"Yes, that's right," Sartre said, his voice a little irritated. "Montaigne's estate is near that city. It still allows visitors. If you are interested, you can visit his study, see the beams in the ceiling into which he had Greek and Latin mottoes burnt."

"Oh, right," Chuck piped up, "I remember reading about that. Wasn't one of the mottoes that line from _Ecclesiastes:_ 'Vanity, vanity, all is vanity'?" Chuck turned and watched, hiding his amusement, as Sartre's annoyance rose. Sartre was annoyed by the interruption, by the quotation, but also annoyed to be pulled deeper than his superficial knowledge of the great French essayist.

"Perhaps so," Sartre commented. He returned his attention to Carina. "Since Charles seems lost in Montaigne, perhaps you and I could tour the rest of my home. Would that be agreeable to you…both?" Chuck nodded and went back to consulting the shelves.

Sartre left the room with Carina. Once they were gone, Chuck left the library. He stopped to speak to the security guard. "I have a headache. Please tell Cindy, my wife, I have gone to our room." The guard nodded. Chuck and Carina's room was on the first floor, near the back of the house. Chuck knew that there was a servant's staircase near their room. There was no reason to think the guard suspected that Chuck knew that. Sartre did not suspect them in the least, and Chuck knew that it was because of him. Sartre didn't see any kind of threat in Chuck, and the guard had picked up his employer's signal.

Once he was out of sight, Chuck slipped his comm into his ear. He'd been wearing the glasses from the other night again, so Sarah could see what he saw, even if she hadn't been able to talk to him.

"Sarah, I'm on my own, headed for the Sartre's study. You were able to hear and see that, I guess?" His voice was a whisper.

"Yes. That man is seriously gross. Poor Carina. I'm sure the pawing has started—or he's tried to start it. Well done in there, though, Chuck. Really. When you want to spy, you spy. You pushed him without him being quite sure that was what you were doing. He'll be even more eager to…well, you know. Hurry. The longer Carina stays alone with him, the worse things could get for her. From what I can hear, they are currently outside in the Grotto."

"Hurrying. Going silent now." Chuck found the doorway to the servant's stair, a narrow steep set of stairs that allowed the servants access to the house without being on display—or did back in the 1700s, when the house was built. Chuck dashed up the steps, his long strides claiming several at a time. He stopped at the second-floor door to listen. He heard nothing. Carefully, he turned the knob and peeked out. No one was in the hallway. He loped down the hallway silently until he got to Sartre's study door.

Chuck tried the knob gently. Locked, as he expected. He pulled the roll of lock-picking tools from inside his suit coat and went to work. He'd finished first at this sort of thing consistently at the Farm. He probably couldn't beat Sarah, but he was somewhere closer to her than to, say, Casey. Unless Sartre had changed things, there was no alarm on the door. The lock clicked. Chuck closed eyes and held his breath. No sound. Likely, no alarm. He pushed open the door and slipped inside, simultaneously closing the door and placing the roll of tools back in his suit coat pocket. He crossed to the desk immediately.

He went to work on the computer. Sartre had installed various serious, innovative protections, but Chuck was work around them. It was taking longer than Chuck wanted, longer than might be good for Carina. Finally, a few minutes later, he was in. He started hunting through files until he found one labeled 'Invitations'. Chuck was now working feverishly, glancing at his watch constantly. Sartre and Carina started their tour almost ten minutes ago.

In the file were a set of emails. Each invited the addressee to a party—aboard a boat on the Seine Friday night. Nothing about the invitations made it clear that they were for European Ring elders, but Chuck's gut told him that was what they were. Sarah agreed. "Jackpot." She softly added, "Excellent, Chuck." He looked at each email addresses. It would take time to identify whose they were, but that was a task for Chuck and Martin in the days ahead. But the main thing was having a location—even a floating one. He would remember it all, but everything he saw was also being recorded in the van.

Chuck got out of the computer and shut it down. He still had a couple minutes. He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand as he moved to a bookcase against the wall and pushed on its edge. It moved on hidden wheels, rolling aside to reveal a safe on the wall, just where Ilsa said it would be. Chuck pulled out the same sort of device he'd used to get into Beridze's house in Batumi, and in about sixty seconds, the safe had been opened.

Inside, Chuck found stacks of Euros and various files. Most looked like they were part of blackmail schemes—pictures of couples illicitly coupling, information on gambling debts or drug habits—the whole buffet of human frailty. But one file, the one on top, made Chuck curious. Inside it, on the top of other items, was a handwritten sheet.

Chuck's weak French was good enough for him to recognize that they were notes prepared in advance for a meeting, an agenda. The notes were for the meeting coming up on Friday, the meeting on the boat. He stared at the page. One item jumped out at him: "Discussion of request for Ring membership. Request made by Kieran Ryker. Ryker will be present, if anyone needs to ask him questions. In lieu of a buy-in amount, Ryker offers a _service performed_ , the execution of Langston Graham." Chuck's felt his blood thicken a bit. He heard Sarah gasp a second later as she read the notes on her screen. He picked up the page of notes and looked beneath it.

There were several photographs of the body of Graham, hands and feet bound, a hole in his forehead. Chuck wavered on his feet for a second. He had no use for Langston Graham, but this…Shit. He heard Sarah make a guttural sound. Then he heard her say, softly, to herself and to him. "The spy gods give; the spy gods take away."

Chuck forced himself to look at each of the photographs carefully but quickly. Then he closed the folder and returned it to its place in the safe. He shut the safe and rolled the bookcase back into place. He left, locking the door behind him and moving fast up the hallway. He went down the steps, checking the door at the bottom as he had the one at the top earlier. He left the stairs and got to his room.

He had just closed the door and stretched out on the bed when he heard Sartre talking to Carina in a low tone, pleading. "Cindy, I am sorry. I thought it was clear that you wanted me to…"

"Maybe I did…Samuel. But I changed my mind. That's allowed. You had no right to attempt to force your…attentions on me…Good night!" The bedroom door opened and Carina was standing inside the room. Her face was streaked with tears. Her blouse was a little askew. She reached up and wiped the tears away, a wry smile crossing her face. Chuck sat up.

"I'm ready for one of those little gold men anytime the academy gets its act together," she said dryly, despite the recent tears. She walked to the bed and stopped, kicking off her heels. "Good job, Burbank Boy. That Montaigne title…." Carina shook her head, "Is that a real title?" Chuck nodded. "I don't know if you understood what you were doing, but it not only got Sartre completely focused on closing the deal, but it gave me an out at the same time. I told him that I had been thinking about it since you mentioned it, and that I wasn't going to let him profit by damaging my husband." She laughed although there was little real merriment in it. "I told him I was going to try to make our marriage work. Stupid son of a bitch, expected me to bend over for him in the Grotto, out there in the damn cold…Anyway, _he_ didn't get lucky. How about you, Chuckles?"

"Um…yeah…I did. I guess." He quickly told her what he had found. She was shocked by the news of Graham. She sat down beside Chuck on the bed.

Since they both had comms in, Sarah joined the discussion. Both she and Ilsa thought the photos of Graham were genuine. Graham was dead. They'd already forwarded stills from the glasses video to Martin. He would send them on to Frost.

Carina and Sarah talked briefly about Carina's encounter with Sartre. They arranged for Martin to pick Chuck and Carina up early. Before ending the conversation, Sarah asked Chuck to be sure he left his glasses on the dresser, turned toward the bed. Carina protested. "But I am your friend, Sarah!"

"Exactly. So, you will understand why I'd prefer that you sleep on the floor, by the door."

"You have _got_ to be kidding."

"No, not kidding, and I swear, Carina, if you so much as pinch him, I will shoot you the next time I see you. Sarah, out."

As they took the comms from their ears, Chuck gave Carina a lopsided grin. "Some pink ribbon…"

}o{

Unsurprisingly, Sartre managed to miss them the next morning. His staff made sure that Chuck and Carina had breakfast, but the master of the house made no appearance. Martin arrived with the car, and Chuck and Carina headed back with him into the city.

Martin told them that word from Castle was that the photos of Graham were genuine. Frost had passed word on to the appropriate people, although there would be no official, public response until his body was found. Stephen was 'lucid', and had been for a few days. He had started work on the list of people invited to the upcoming Ring party, but he had no results yet. Ilsa had been at work tracking down the arrangements that had been made for the party boat and its staff, as well as for the catering of the event. Sarah had been helping Ilsa.

The plan was to take the rest of the day off, however. Chuck was very glad of that. He was the one who slept on the floor, not Carina. And that, combined with his worry about being attacked by Sartre or his men, or about being attacked by Carina, meant Chuck had not rested much.

Martin told Chuck that Sarah said she be waiting in their room. Carina muttered under her breath. "Yeah, with open legs…"

When they got back to the _Athéné,_ Chuck and Carina got out. Martin went on with the car. When they got in the elevator, Carina fixed Chuck with a frank stare. "So, tell me, Chuck, really, are you in love with Sarah?"

Chuck shook his head at her. "You know, Carina, I'm a spy, but I am not a liar. That's never become habitual for me, and I never intend for it to, if I can help it." His tone was quiet but fierce. "I love Sarah Walker, always have. End. Of. Story. Why does this bother you so much? Why can't you be happy for us?"

Carina could not hold his gaze. She looked up at the ascending numbers on the elevator display. Chuck's frustration grew.

"I am not Chuck Bartowski, Carina—or not exactly. Like you said the other night at the clown school function—I've been to the goddamn Farm, hated it, but I was there. I don't know where they send you DEA folks, but I'll bet you serious money that it is not the cynical, soul-sucking Tartarus that the Farm is. The Farm's job isn't just to _spy you up_ , to give you skills, knowledge, it's also to _spy you down_ , to demoralize you, in every sense of that term, to rend your sense of who you are and what is of real value.

"Go check my scores, Carina. I got spied up. But I didn't get spied down. I count that a win. Still, I am not some naïve buffoon who can't get a decent job or a date with an attractive woman. I know the score. I know it as well as you do," he thought about Frost, the Intersect, Ellie, Martin, "in fact, I bet I know it better than you do. Stop acting like Sarah's slumming, stop acting like I'm a good-natured ignoramus. Whatever all this," Chuck waved his hand dismissively at Carina, "is supposed to be. Just frickin' stop." The elevator stopped and Chuck stormed off.

After the doors closed, he realized he'd gotten off on the wrong floor. Someone must've pushed a wrong button. _Damn_. He climbed the two flights of stairs to his floor, cursing the spy life as he took each step upward.

}o{

Sarah was dozing in the room. She hadn't just been joking with Carina. She'd left the feed from the camera glasses on all night as she worked. Chuck had turned them on himself, and that not only allowed her to keep her eyes on Carina, but to also watch over Chuck.

She thought about that night in Burbank, after the El Compadre, after Casey had staged the attempt to take Chuck from the CIA, after Chuck had saved General Stanfield for real (that was not fake, she later came to know)—after all that, she had watched over him as he sat alone on the beach. What she imagined him thinking then was not, in its details, correct (he wasn't Chuck Bartowski) but it wasn't wrong in its essentials. Chuck was Chuck. _Thank God!_ He had been thinking about his life, about his choices, about her.

As the sun rose that morning, a new day, Sarah had taken off her boots and walked to Chuck, her feet sinking deliciously into the cool sand beneath the warming sun. She remembered that she felt free as she walked to him, boots off. She'd asked him to trust her. She had never asked anyone that before. It had been a moment of self-discovery and self-creation all at once. She'd never been the same, although she'd tried to be. _How I tried!_

She was half-dreaming, half-remembering that morning on the beach when Chuck came into the room. He looked tired and angry. Carina. Sarah made eye contact with him, then lifted the covers, inviting him to bed. He climbed in with his clothes on. He toed off his shoes once he joined her. She heard them hit the floor. She put her bare feet between his besocked ones and she finally slept.

}o{

As Chuck felt Sarah's feet grow warm, he wondered why it was that there'd been no featured church on this mission. Of course, there were churches, famous churches like Notre Dame, all over Paris. But in Batumi, there'd been the Orthodox cathedral, in Romney, the vacated Overcoming Life Church, at Circus Maximus, the next-door, minister's trailer. But in Paris?

And then he looked at Sarah's face, and he knew. She was his precious place; she was his church— _her church not made with hands_. That Waterboys' song _…_ Chuck fell asleep as he heard the horns began to play.

}o{

Shortly after noon, both hungry and a bit stir-crazy, Chuck and Sarah took a walk, planning to stop somewhere along the way to eat. The temperature had risen; the sun was out. Sarah was completely content, as Chuck seemed to be, to walk along and soak in the atmosphere. Sarah had been to so many cities she'd never visited. To say she'd visited Paris was about as true, and as false, as a businessman who claimed to have visited Paris because he'd caught a connecting flight at Charles de Gaulle. She been shot at and shot people in Paris—she'd never visited.

The city was beautiful, spring was all-but there, pulsating just off stage, and its insistence on change already registered in the air and in the awakening faces of the plants and the people.

Sarah squeezed Chuck's hand, indescribably happy to share this with him. He pulled her gently to him and kissed her, right there in public. He'd slipped on his ring when they left the hotel. That he wanted to wear it added a sweetness to the warmth and light of the day for her.

They walked along, starting to think more seriously about stopping to eat, when Sarah felt the day cool and darken. The weather hadn't changed. No, she realized, the weather was the same. But they were standing only a few yards from the spot where Sarah had taken her Red Test, taken her first life.

* * *

 **A/N2** If you don't know that Mike Scott song, the Waterboys' "Church Not Made with Hands", you owe it to yourself to find it. It's on the album, _A Pagan Place_. I bought that album many years ago and have never quit listening to it. The song I mentioned—check out its lyrics—is about as good a Chuck-to-Sarah song as you can find, about as good a song as you can find, period.

I've been to Montaigne's study a couple of times. Worth the trip. And I've spent a fair amount of time in Bordeaux. Amazing city.

Apologies to Edgar Allen Poe for forcing his onomatopoeia word into service here. And to English, I guess, for turning 'abacus' into a verb.

Tune in next time for more Paris, more Chuck and Sarah, more Carina, and a boatload of bad guys (and gals—the Ring is an equal-opportunity employer). Chapter 29 "A Dreary Utilitarian Day".


	29. Chapter 29: A Dreary Utilitarian Day

**A/N1** Almost all our pieces have been in place for our stretch run for a little while now. This chapter begins that stretch run. It will take us from Paris to…another place. But there is still darkness to fight in the City of Lights, and this is a busy chapter, so, here, without further preludial ado, is the next installment of _The Eiffel Tower High Mission._

Thanks for reading and reviewing.

Don't own Chuck. Writing for my amusement and yours. (Ok, so there was a little further preludial ado.)

* * *

 **Turned Tables**

 _The Eiffel Tower High Mission_

* * *

Monday, February 24, 2008  
A street in Paris  
Early afternoon

* * *

CHAPTER 29 A Dreary Utilitarian Day

* * *

Chuck felt Sarah drop his hand. He pivoted to her. The holiday she had carried in her eye since they had gotten out of sight of the hotel had ended. Her expression was grim, despairing. She wasn't looking at him—or at any typical Parisian gazingstock: people, shops, buildings.

She was staring at a spot on the sidewalk a few yards ahead of them. 'Staring': too weak a word. She was wholly fixated, eyes—and all the rest of her as well, body and mind—epoxied to that spot.

"Sarah?" Chuck whispered her name before it struck him. The address. Photographs. Her file. The origin of the Ice Queen. Her Red Test. Chuck looked to her face but couldn't get past her eyes. They were awash in pain and regret—but he could also see that she was struggling against showing it, clamping down on herself, shutting the emotions inside herself.

She tore her eyes from the spot, although she remained otherwise fixated on it. Looking at Chuck, she pressed her full lips into a thin red line. "We shouldn't be doing this. We shouldn't be acting like this in public. We are on a mission. You are supposed to be married to Carina." He reached for her hand but she held it away from him. "Focus, Chuck."

Chuck pulled his hand back like it had been smacked. He felt anger flash in his eyes. _They weren't in Burbank or even Batumi anymore._ She'd been as caught up in the moment as he was, as fully and happily invested in _them_ , there, then…together. He saw her register the anger-flash in his eyes and hers changed—from blue-apocalyptic to blue-apologetic.

Her words came out in a rush. "Oh, damn it, Chuck, I am so sorry. I…time-travelled for a moment, I became the person I was when I was last in this spot. Please, Chuck, forgive me." She reached for his hand tentatively, her eyes almost begging. Chuck felt the anger run out of him. He should have understood, even anticipated her flashback.

He gave her his hand and squeezed hers gently. "No need to ask, Sarah, and I apologize. I shouldn't have taken that personally. Are you ok?"

He could tell she was gray around the edges, unsure of herself. He saw a _café_ nearby and gestured toward it by tilting his head. She nodded hers. They walked to it and found a seat outside in the sunshine. They sat in silence until they ordered. When the waiter left, Sarah leaned toward Chuck. "Are we ok?"

He nodded definitively. "We are. And, you are right, I shouldn't let all this, Paris, go to my head and insist on being a couple in the middle of a mission in which I am part of a different 'couple'. I'm sorry about that. But you, Sarah Walker, you are a potent drug, and I am hooked."

She smiled at him, a small smile but freighted with meaning. "It's ok, Chuck, I was every bit as involved as you, every bit as overwhelmed by us, by us in Paris, as you were. I'm looking at all this for the first time too, even if I technically have seen some of it before." She turned involuntarily toward the spot on the sidewalk, now behind them instead of ahead of them, and he saw a tremor pass through her.

"I'm guessing we now know that it was my Mom who kept me from ever facing a Red Test," Chuck offered. "Being the one person who could get results from Dad gave her real power, enough to withstand Graham, at least some of the time. Too bad she didn't have that power yet when you faced yours…" Chuck gazed at the ground, not at her. He felt guilty about being spared when she had not been.

Sarah spoke, her voice now firm and even. "That's not anyone's fault, Chuck. The cards got dealt facing down and I turned over the ones I did. Luck of the draw, even if it was bad. I am sorry for my response a moment ago.

"That was the worst day of my life. I honestly thought I had lost my humanity that day, become something else. I started running after I pulled that trigger, and I didn't slow down until Budapest, didn't stop until Burbank. This," she pointed unobtrusively to the spot to which her eyes kept returning, "this was the starting line of a years-long race against myself, my own history, my own feelings…"

Chuck was silent. So was she. The waiter brought them sandwiches, salad, and sparkling water.

Chuck started again. "In some ways, I almost wish my Red Test hadn't been _waived_ …or whatever the right term is. I would've had to make a real choice. I think I would have just left.

"But I can't get myself to really regret that now, Sarah. I would never have found you. As much as I hate this life, I can't bring myself to regret having made the choices I've made, for keeping that resignation letter in my pocket after I saw your file."

"Do you know how much I want to kiss you right now, Chuck?" she asked, leaning a fraction further toward him, but a fraction that he could feel register in his body, in a tightness below his stomach.

"Me too, Sarah."

She smiled at him and leaned back slowly, picking up her water and sipping it while she gazed at him intently, a blue smolder. She closed her eyes and moaned, the moan audible only to him. "And I will not stop with one kiss, or stop at your mouth…"

Chuck shifted his feet under the table and made himself look away from her eyes. He gulped some of his water. Cooled slightly, he brought his gaze back to her. She was smiling in the enjoyment of his struggle with himself, her ability to move him.

After a minute, the smolder died down and she tilted her head to the side, a question forming.

"Why did you go to the Farm, Chuck? I asked back in Savannah and you dodged the question. Why?"

Chuck blew out a breath slowly. He looked away, but not to hide anything. He was thinking.

"You are right, Sarah, of course. I did dodge the question. But not because you asked it. I dodged it even when Mom asked it, and when Ellie did, back before I started. They thought I would become an analyst. I never said I wouldn't, but I just went on to the Farm, to become an agent, and they went nuclear. But the reason I have never answered is that I have never known. I felt…compelled to do it. But I…I guess I know the answer now, or the most important part of it."

Chuck stopped talking and took a bite of his salad. A cloud had passed in front of the sun, and it was suddenly very cool there seated outside. He pulled his jacket closer. When he glanced at Sarah, she was watching him with a patient bemusement.

"So?"

"So, as a kid, I felt like I was my father's son…Everyone thought of me that way. I identified with him so strongly. I loved him so much. I wanted to grow up to be just like him. Thoughtful, empathetic, patient, far-seeing. When he left, I was lost. I was too young to understand, but it was like I had been a compass and true north just…vanished. My needle started to spin.

"I blamed everyone—Mom, especially, but also always myself. How could he have left unless I had disappointed him? Done something wrong? For a long time, I remained like that, lost. High school, even college. My relationship with Julie Roark helped me for a while, made me feel like maybe I had found a direction. But then she hit the ejector-seat button too."

Chuck knew he hadn't really told Sarah that story, except in a myth-eaten form, as a story about Jill Robertson, Chuck Bartowski's college girlfriend. He flicked a nervous glance at Sarah, but she did not stop him; she let him go on. He knew he was spiraling, struggling to tell this all coherently, but he didn't try to edit or organize. He let it spill out, raw. He could reconsider it later.

"And so, I needed direction, I needed a place to go. I was _so angry_ , Sarah. My freshest anger was with Julie, but I had old fury against Mom, blaming her for Dad…and old fury against Dad for abandoning me, and an old fury against myself for not being lovable enough for either of my parents really to love me…" He jerked to a stop, clenching and unclenching his jaw.

"It's ok, Chuck, we don't have to do this…not now, anyway." They sat quietly for a moment.

"No," Chuck replied gently, forcing himself to relax a little. "I need to hear myself say this out loud." He took a breath.

"When I decided to become an agent, I did it to hurt myself, to see if I could shock myself into being…someone else…someone _different._ To fan those old furies into full blaze. I did it to hurt my Mom, because I knew she was terrified of it, even if I didn't fully understand why. But I did it particularly to hurt my Dad, to stop, to _stop by force,_ " Chuck slammed his eyes shut, "to stop being my father's son, to choose a life my gut told me he would _hate_ for me. I joined the CIA to throw myself—at least as I had known myself, understood myself—away. To trash _me_ , and the people who had made me, Dad most, I think…" He dropped his fork onto the table, as if he was frightened of what he might do with it.

"Oh, Chuck, sweetie…" Tears were running down Sarah's face.

"It didn't work. One day, I don't know which one exactly, but one day at the Farm I accepted that I wasn't becoming someone else. I could learn how to do the things they taught me, but I knew I could never do most of them, not as the CIA would want me to.

"I learned the lessons they taught me but I never became what they wanted me to be. I was my father's son after all—although that is not how I understood it at the time, not the way I explained it to myself. I wouldn't face it, couldn't face it. I don't know that I fully understood it until the last few days, until after Castle. I just had no idea how angry with Dad I have been—and for how long. I mean I am furious with Mom—an old and new fury. But seeing Dad…It opened things I didn't know I had closed, or tried to close."

Chuck sat in silence for a moment. He did not know quite how to go on. All of it was so jumbled. Sarah seemed to understand. She tried to eat but she had lost her appetite too. He took a sip of water.

"Sarah, why did you go through with it? With your Red Test? Why not just walk away? Could you have gone college or even started pulling cons again—you did that with your dad, right?"

Sarah nodded choppily. "I suppose in some sense of 'could', I could have done one of those things. But Graham had implied to me that my dad's fate, his jail time, and perhaps other things, would be made shorter, or easier, if I agreed to join the CIA, and if Graham was happy with my 'progress'.

"Unlike you, although there was much about the Farm I disliked or, frankly, feared, it was the closest I had come in years to a…home. Sad, I know. But it was stable. I knew what was expected of me. I was good at it. Sometimes even extraordinary. Graham cheered me on, bolstered me. I was pleasing someone, even someone important. And, although much that I was learning was indistinguishable from what Dad taught me, I was told it was all going to be put to a better, a noble purpose.

"I showed up in Paris back then not understanding what was going to happen. Graham explained it all to me only a half an hour or so before I showed up here. He did it by phone. He had a female agent I had never met supply me with the gun and give me directions to the place where I would find the target, find the woman.

"I was in a daze. The target was a traitor. A danger to other agents and to innocent people. She needed to be terminated. There was no recourse. I had to do it to prove that I was ready, that I was loyal, that I was an agent. The other agents had done it. The agent Graham sent told me she had done it and that it had…" Sarah closed her eyes, "…clarified things for her.

"So, I went. I don't know what I planned to do. But the target, the woman, stooped down there on the sidewalk. I don't think I would have done it—although I am not sure—but then she reached for something. I thought 'Gun!' and my training, the Farm, took over. She was dead before I even decided to pull my gun. It was out and smoking while some part of me thought there was still time to deliberate…"

Sarah took a moment. She was clearly again back in Paris on that night. "I thought that I proved not only that I could kill, but that I was a killer, Chuck. I did it so…automatically."

"I had the shakes that night, after. I couldn't eat for a couple of days. I kept dreaming the whole thing, trying in my dream to locate the moment I decided to kill that woman. But I couldn't find it. I could only find my recollection of her reach, and then of the spit of the silencer, and her slumping down. Down. Right over there." She had looked at that spot again. He got the waiter's attention and he took their food, packaged it for takeaway, and returned it. They got up and walked back toward the hotel without talking. The weather was actually changing now, grayer and chillier.

About halfway there, Sarah muttered a phrase to herself, shaking her head. Chuck took it to be French. "What was that, Sarah?"

She seemed not to realize she had spoken. Then she realized she had—and what she had said. "Oh, some lines to a poem someone told me back on that first visit here. It's a summary of Paris life. I was quoting a part of it that gets quoted often—" _metro, boulot, dodo"._ It's taken from the end of the poem. Roughly translated it goes:

 _Rush in, boy, punch your number:  
Thus to earn the salary,  
Of a dreary utilitarian day:  
Metro, work, bistro, cigs, sleep, zero_.

It stuck in my head—probably because of my Red Test. _D'un morne jour utilitaire_. That became sort of my slogan for my life as Graham's Enforcer, as the Ice Queen. _A dreary utilitarian day_. Ending in…zero. Nothing." She thought for a moment.

"I knew that was where it would end after the Red Test. Zero. But I guess I did avoid the cigarettes." She laughed briefly, a laugh mostly bitter. "Another reason it stuck in my mind: the poem's title is _Coulers d'unsine_ — _Factory Colors_. My Factory Color was red….All Day Permanent Red." She bit her bottom lip, her gaze inward. They walked on, slowly. Each wanted to hold the other's hand, needed to. Sarah saw Chuck glance at her hand longingly. She shook herself bodily, not just her head.

"I know what I said during my Red Test flashback a little while ago…and we should be more careful. But, like you, Chuck, I just want to _be,_ to be in Paris and to be with you. I don't want to go back to the way we were—the way I made us be in Batumi, or tried to make us be in Romney.

"I've lived enough dreary utilitarian days, enough days ending in zero, hurtling toward nothing. I will try to do better in public, even if no one from the team is around, until this is over. But in our room," she turned a predatory gaze on him, "you are _mine_."

"I live to serve, or be served up—as in _on a platter_." Chuck replied, bowing at the waist. Sarah licked her lips.

But after he stood, the smile left his face. "Since you haven't brought it up, Sarah, I will. What do you make of Ryker coming to Paris? I didn't want to say anything about him, particularly around the others, because of…you know, Budapest, but it seems bizarre that he shows up now."

"Yes, it is an odd coincidence. But I do think it is a coincidence. I meant to talk to you about this over lunch, but the walk and the sunshine and you…" Sarah's face lit up, "and then we came upon that spot…" and her face darkened.

"Anyway," she went on, "that bit about Ryker buying-in...I wonder if that was what Ryker was hoping for if he had gotten Molly? Enough money to buy his way into the Ring? It seems likely that the Ring was the link between Graham and Ryker all along, in some way. Martin was supposed to tell Frost that Ryker is here, to see if your she or your Dad could come up with anythng…"

"So, what did you say about Ryker to Martin?"

"Just that he had been my handler on a mission in Budapest. No more. Let's stick with that unless we have to say more."

Chuck nodded.

}o{

Sarah turned her head, considering the room, the suite. Everyone was there. Ilsa, Carina, Martin, Chuck. Martin had set up a feed that would allow them to talk to Frost. Planning for the floating Ring party was beginning in earnest. Frost wanted to talk about preliminaries.

Sarah was almost certain that Frost wanted also to see Chuck, not just hear his clipped impersonation of her on the phone. Chuck seemed reconciled to the video conference, although he was far from pleased.

Sarah sipped her black coffee. Rooms like this, planning like this, had been a regular feature of her life. But never had she felt so connected to the people in the room. Chuck, the man she loved, Martin, his best friend and a man she was rapidly coming to respect, Carina, her best friend and well…her best friend, Ilsa, a likable, competent agent.

In the past, the others in rooms like this had been more like equipment than like people, mattering only as mission parameters dictated they mattered. But these people _mattered_ , full stop. She hoped that rooms like this would not be a feature of her life soon. The people in it, yes. Mission planning, no. She wanted to finish the Ring—and get out.

The monitor came to life. After a moment there was Frost, seated in Castle. "Team, good to see you. Let me get right to it. First, there is a serious but hush-hush search on for Graham's body. We do believe the photographs are genuine, but a body would, of course, prove it. We don't want to let on that we suspect he is dead until we know he is.

"Second, we have been looking for leads to Ryker. Our best guess is that he is not in Paris, yet. We haven't gotten a hit on any of his known aliases. We can locate no one who has seen him recently. He's in the wind. We will do everything we can on this end to find him.

"Third, we have made some progress identifying the holders of the email addresses on Sartre's invitations. But of course, getting an invitation is not a crime. Knowing who these people are is good, very good, but it would be better to have proof that they are Ring.

"Fourth, the agenda you found refers to _plans_ but does not detail what they are. We need to know that, and presumably Sartre, or someone, will be detailing them. We need to get a bug into that meeting. No doubt, they will sweep the boat before the meeting, so we need the bug to get put into place as close to the beginning of the meeting itself as possible. Ilsa?"

Ilsa stood up. "We need to get someone in the meeting, on the wait staff. I am the natural person. Chuck and Carina are known to Sartre. Sarah will join the kitchen staff but will stay in the kitchen as a backup for me, should I need help. Only kitchen staff should see you. Martin, you will coordinate from a secure location near the Seine.

"Sartre has contracted with _Yachts de Paris_. He will be using the pride of their line, _Paquebot_. Eighty-five meters long…" A picture appeared on another screen. A very large boat, a flattened, miniature ocean liner, white and lovely, with two red and black smokestacks (amidships, as it were), filled the screen. Chuck whistled.

"This company is first-rate, they run events 'with bespoke know-how' as they like to put it. _Paquebot_ can hold eight hundred, if all you are doing is serving cocktails. Sartre is, of course, hosting far, far fewer—and serving dinner. He will host ten Ring elders, probably another twenty rank-and-file Ring agents, and various bodyguards and hangers-on. Sixty guests, total. That's what the paperwork says.

"My guess is that after dinner, the agents and bodyguards and others will be sent out, onto the sightseeing deck if it is warm enough. Into the ballroom if not. _Lenôtre_ will supply the kitchen staff and prepare the meal. You are already on their roster, Sarah, backdated.

"The boat will be boarded and the party will embark from _Port Henry IV._ It will travel very slowly to _Port de Javel Haut_ , where the party will, eventually, disembark. Chuck, Carina, you will follow, but at a distance. The speedboat you will have will allow you to overtake _Paquebot_ easily, if that is necessary." Carina nodded firmly. Chuck just looked at her.

"The first goal to positively ID the Ring Elders and anyone else of interest. We will get photographs as they board, and then photographs at the meeting. The second goal is to place a bug, so that we have access to what is said during the meeting. I will try to be in the room during the meeting, but it is likely that I will be unable to stay."

}o{

The next three days, Tuesday to Thursday, went by slowly. Sarah was happy for it. It was raining hard for much of the time, and she had suggested that they stay in, order room service, and be together. This meant that they were in bed for the better part of the three days, but they were far from inactive. Besides making love, they spent time talking, telling stories.

Sarah managed to tell Chuck about her father and about a few of the 'adventures' they had shared when she was a girl. She told him bits and pieces of missions, funny or silly things that had happened to her. He told her about his Dad, his Mom, Ellie—and he told her about college, Julie (and Bryce), and more about his early days of spying.

Initially, telling Chuck things was hard for Sarah, still. Words came out singly, slowly, painfully, each one held by its edges. But after a while, she began to find entire sentences, then whole stories tumbling from her. All her life, at least the parts she could remember, she had kept everything in—first out of guilt and shame (with her father), then out of duty or what she took to be duty (with the CIA).

Mystery, partly self-created and nearly impenetrable, had surrounded her for so long that she began to despair that she could make herself known. Frank, open contact with other people, to be able to speak out her heart and mind without regret, to be at no cross-purposes—all of that seemed denied to her.

But there, in that Paris hotel room, she spoke out her heart and mind to the man she loved, and found that she not only felt things, but felt them deeply and engrossingly, and that she could share them. No regrets. There was no end to the things in her heart and mind.

Chuck hung on every word, on every subtle nuance of tone and feeling. He judged nothing; he heard everything. He loved her, every syllable, every word, every story, beginning, middle, and end.

Sarah could see Chuck returning to himself. He was far from ready to reconcile with Frost, even with Ellie. But he had gone out a couple of times for coffee with Martin. The two men were finding their way back to friendship.

}o{

But things between Sarah and Carina remained difficult. When Chuck went for coffee with Martin on Wednesday afternoon, Sarah went for drinks with Carina. They went no further than _Le Bar_ downstairs in the _Athéné_. Carina had dressed provocatively, and as soon as they sat down, she began to inventory the men in the bar. Sarah tried to ignore her, but, after a moment, Carina got up and walked to the bar. She returned a few minutes later, a drink in each hand and a man on each side.

"Albert, Gabriel—I would like you to meet my best friend, Sarah." Carina slipped into the booth, allowing enough room for Gabriel to slip in beside her, but not enough for Albert. He looked expectantly at Sarah. She shot Carina a glance and slid over, watching a smile slide onto Carina's face as she did so. A moment of complicated, uncomfortable silence passed.

Albert, dark-haired and olive-skinned, spoke up, looking at Sarah. "Two such beautiful women and so far from home. Your friend tells me you are, as she is, in Paris alone." He then caught himself and smiled. "I mean alone except for each other, of course." Sarah kicked Carina hard under the table, and Carina nearly spilled some of her gimlet. She covered her annoyance with a light laugh. Sarah took a sip of the gin and tonic that Carina had brought her, staring hard at Carina above the rim of the glass.

"Yes, well, Albert, Sarah and I are together, but not _together_. We are lonely—all these long, rainy days, and we were trying to think of something we could do…indoors…to keep ourselves occupied." Albert sent a look to Gabriel he intended to keep between himself and his friend, but he failed. Sarah saw it. Gabriel had just put his arm up on the booth, around Carina's shoulders but not in contact with her yet. Sarah tensed. She realized that Albert was about to mimic his blonde friend. Sarah gave him a cold look and his arm stopped in mid-rise, hanging awkwardly in the air for a second, before he thought to put it down.

"Albert, Gabriel, I am afraid Carina has given you the wrong idea. I am not lonely—I am in Paris with my boyfriend, and I have all I can handle indoors," Sarah aimed the remark at Carina, allowing her fury to show for a second, "so, if you will excuse me?" She started to slide out of the booth, forcing Albert to his feet. He looked at Gabriel with a shrug and Gabriel stood up too. Together, talking in low but animated voices, they went back to the bar. Sarah stayed in the booth.

"Carina, I swear to God, if you do that to me again…"

"Just making sure you were still intent on this bizarre plan to domesticate yourself." Carina's eyes flashed. She was now angry too. "You are a wild thing, Sarah. You can't be tied down. You don't do tame. Middle-class conventions leave you cold…"

"Stop, Carina. Just stop. I know we have both been guilty in the past of trying to live through the other. Did you ever wonder why we did that? Could it have been because we both had so little that was real in our lives we needed what was real—or what we thought was real, wanted to be real—in the other's? The person you are describing, Carina, is not me. It was never me. The person you are describing is _you._ "

Sarah paused for a second. Carina was so taken aback that she managed no immediate response. "You've always confused us, always tried to make us one person, one set of desires, one set of needs. You've never really tried to get to know _me_. You just projected yourself onto me."

Sarah paused again, took a deep breath, and went on. "But maybe the worst part of it all is that the person you projected onto me isn't even really you. It's the _you_ you want to be.

"I've seen your eyes, Carina, on late night stakeouts. I've seen them when you've said goodbye to your latest mission fling—men like Gabriel over there at the bar. I've seen you register the emptiness of all this. But you won't own that feeling and you won't tolerate any behavior that might make you own it. You always just brazen it out, play the game harder."

Sarah reached out and put her hand on Carina's. Carina started to jerk hers away, but Sarah grabbed it.

"No, Carina, for once, I am going to speak and you are going to listen, even if you don't like that role-reversal. I was never a wild thing—I was a _lost thing_. I was never resistant to ties—I just had no idea how to have them. I do tame, although I wouldn't call it that, I would call it _gentle_. I want a life in which I can be gentle. So-called middle-class conventions are only 'middle-class' in the pejorative sense if you live them that way. A home need not be walled-in dysfunction like mine was when I was little…"

Carina seized the word. "Home? Oh, my God…you are not just romantically involved with your partner, you are planning…What are you planning? Leaving the spy life? A house? A mini-van? Rugrats?" Carina's eyes were as big around as the cocktail glass holding her drink. "Chuck's turning you into his broodmare?"

Despite her anger, Sarah couldn't help it—she chuckled. " _Broodmare_ , Carina?" Sarah shook her head and made herself plunge in. It was time. She let go of Carina's hand. "Carina, I have asked Chuck to marry me and he's accepted."

Stone silence, heavy and unmoving. An eternal pause.

Slowly, slowly, Carina found her voice, choking out the first few syllables. "You…you…cannot be serious. You can't be." Sarah just gazed at Carina steadily. " _You_ asked him? That man must be a Svengali in the sack, because he has mesmerized you." Carina frowned ruefully, her eyes becoming unfocused. "Now, I'm not sure whether to be glad or sad I never bedded him…"

"We are not going to talk for long, Carina, or be friends for long, if you keep talking about bedding my fiancé." Sarah's voice was monotonic—a warning.

The word 'fiancé' seemed to jolt Carina back to the conversation. "How can you do it? Give up this life? The glamor? The excitement? The beautiful places?"

"You know, Carina, for someone who hates the 'romantic', you have romanticized this life. How often have you actually been to houses like Sartre's in the years you've been with the DEA?" Carina did not answer. "How many times have you stayed at hotels like this?" No answer. "How often have you been dressed in gowns?" Still, no answer.

"What sights in Paris have you seen in the past? Have you ever just sat in a _café,_ nursing a coffee, and just _been there_? Not worrying about sight lines or exits, not worrying about a mark or an asset or a target?

"How many of the men we have worked with have looked like Bryce? How many of the bad guys have looked or dressed like that scumbag Sartre?"

No answer. No answer. More silence.

Finally, Carina responded, whispering fiercely, intently. "But there _were_ good times. There _were_ mansions and gowns and beautiful cities and handsome men..."

Sarah softened her tone. "I never said that there were _none_. But they've not been frequent. Mostly it's been a series of dreary utilitarian days.

"I've seen the world through a scope, Carina. I've lived in shadows and on side streets. I've spent so much of my professional life waiting—not for a party, or a handsome stranger, or whatever it is that romanticized spies wait for. No, I've spent so much of my professional life waiting—to squeeze a trigger, to end a life.

"And, yes, although I will be no one's _broodmare_ , I do want to children. I want to give life, if I can; I've taken enough of it."

Carina stared at the tabletop, breathing hard, as if she'd been running. Sarah could see the panic setting in. She felt for her friend but she also needed to tell her the truth.

"Don't pull any more stunts like Albert and Gabriel, Carina. What you are calling 'a middle-class life', a life with a husband and children, is what I want. I don't want the televised version of it; I want the version that Chuck and I will work out together.

"I don't want someone else's marriage; I want mine and Chuck's. What that will look like is something that we will create together. But, Carina, what I want is not what you have to want. I'm not projecting my choice on you. Be a wild thing, live your life outside of 'middle-class' conventions, if that is what you really want. I still hope to be your friend, still want to be your friend. But I want you to see _me_ , to see my choices, and respect them."

Carina searched Sarah's face for a moment, then she managed a defeated smile. Her fingers tapping on the table marked the passing of time. Finally, she picked up her napkin and waved it. "I surrender." She gazed at Sarah in wonderment for a long moment. "Sarah Walker marrying Charles Carmichael. The lion lies down with the lamb."

Carina looked back over at Albert and Gabriel. Her smile turned sneaky then audacious then brazen. "They seem like buddies, right?" Sarah nodded. "You think they'd be willing to share? I hate to have to choose just one."

Sarah shook her head at Carina and got up. "I don't need to know how this ends." Carina stood. She picked up her glass, toasted Sarah with the last of her gimlet. Then she headed to the bar, perhaps to try her two-for-one gambit.

Sarah turned and went upstairs without a backward glance. But Carina stopped, and stood, and looked back at Sarah.

}o{

Friday came, clear and cold. But the rain stopped, finally. Preparations were finished.

At 3 pm, Sarah and Ilsa boarded _Paquebot_ with the other members of the kitchen and wait staff. Ilsa, knowing of Sarah's skill with knives, had gotten her stationed as a food preparation worker, and all she was required to do was cut up vegetables and trim meat. She managed each well enough that no one paid any special attention to her. She had on the standard _Lenôtre_ uniform—white jacket and pants. She'd donned a brunette wig, just as a further disguise, and put on a pair of large glasses.

They had all been checked in and been searched as they boarded. Sarah had not been able to bring her pistol or her knives—but the kitchen was full of potential weapons, so she wasn't too worried about that. Ilsa had smuggled the bug aboard by stowing it in her bra. The trick for her was going to be getting the bug stationed between the expected final sweep for bugs and the beginning of the meeting. Ilsa was busy helping to set the tables in the dining room.

At 5 pm, the Head Steward came aboard, formally taking 'possession' of the boat. He went through it slowly, checking to be sure that everything was just so, proper and in place. Pressure showed on his face. Clearly, Sartre and his group were important customers.

At 6 pm, the Head Steward made his final checks and guests began to arrive. Sarah wondered if Ryker would make it after all. Frost had not been able to find him or even a trace of him. He might be in Paris, but if he was he had managed to get there without leaving even a fingerprint behind him. Sarah felt her pulse begin to race at the thought of Ryker. She wanted him to be here. She wanted to be able to finish things with him. Then, her mother and Molly would be safe. She could call them, maybe even visit. Chuck could get to know them.

The boat was underway. Sarah felt the engines, felt the motion.

Ilsa came into the kitchen. She did not look at Sarah, but as she passed her, she slipped a piece of paper into Sarah's jacket pocket. Sarah waited until Ilsa had been gone for a couple of minutes, then, looking around to be sure no one was paying attention, she pulled the paper out. Two words: _Ryker's aboard_.

Sarah tore up the piece of paper and threw it in the trash, beneath some vegetable trimmings. She told herself to calm down and focus. It was unlikely that she could do anything about Ryker tonight. Her job was to be present if Ilsa got into trouble. If everything went to plan, they would disembark later, with photographs and vital information, but with no confrontations, nothing to alert the Ring to what had happened. But Chuck had a car waiting. If everything went as she hoped, she and Chuck would be able to follow Ryker away from the meeting—and take him.

Things in the kitchen sped up. _Hors-d'oeuvres_ were served. Appetizers were prepared. Everyone and everything in the kitchen was in motion, it seemed. The main course went out. Dessert was being readied when the kitchen door opened. In walked Sartre and Ryker. Sartre smiled his dentist-white smile. "We've come to give the chef our compliments." _Shit, of course, they would._

Sarah ducked her head, attending to the strawberries she was slicing. Sartre was chatting amicably with the chef. Ryker had disengaged and was walking around the kitchen, watching the various preparations.

He walked to where Sarah was working. She didn't dare look at him. She stayed intent on her task, slowing her pace, though, and deliberately making her knife work a bit clumsy. She felt his eyes on her, lingering. She tightened her grip on her knife.

}o{

Chuck and Carina had watched the boarding from a distance, through binoculars. They were well hidden behind a large shipping crate a distance away from the boat. The speedboat they were to use was at waiting nearby.

"Ok, there's Sartre and his insect friend—what was his name?"

"Marcel, Anatole Marcel."

"Oh, yeah. The clown instructor. That guy looks like he couldn't make a hyena laugh, to be honest. Huh. Sartre's also got some arm candy. Redhead. Vastly inferior to Yours Truly—but then all women are, redheaded or not. Any port in a storm, I guess, eh, Sartre?" Carina lowered the binoculars to look at Chuck.

"So, I hear you are an engaged man, Blondie's fiancé?"

Chuck nodded. Sarah had shared the _Le Bar_ incidents with him. Luckily, he'd had a couple of days to get past it. Initially, the story had made him angry. "Yes, I am the lucky man she chose."

Chuck paused. Carina put the binoculars back up to her eyes. "I hear you chose them in tandem, Carina." Carina did not lower the binoculars but Chuck saw her color rise. After a moment, she was back in control of herself. She lowered the binoculars and shrugged a shoulder. "Maybe."

Chuck wasn't interested in the details, or whether there even were any. He let it go. He'd gotten a reaction—score one for the Burbank Boy, a small payback for Carina's antics. "Anyway, yeah, Sarah proposed and I said yes. We're really happy, Carina."

"I get that, Chuckles. I grant I have never seen Sarah like this, all glowy…" She put the binoculars back up. "Are you sure she'd not fooling herself, Chuck. I mean she is Sarah Freakin' Walker. The Wildcard Enforcer. The Ice Queen. Do you honestly think she's going to be happy for long in an ordinary life?"

"I thought you waved the white flag, Carina, that you were done with this." Chuck's voice was clipped.

"I did. I am not trying to cause trouble between you. I'm just trying…to understand." She let the binoculars hang from the cord around her neck and gestured at him with both hands open, palms up. "Help me to understand."

Chuck sighed. "You're right. She is Sarah _Freakin'_ Walker. She'll always be that. She's not a normal girl. I'm not trying to make her one. She's extraordinary. She'd be extraordinary at anything, because she's that special, that smart, that amazing. I hope to share in the extraordinary life she'll have. I hope to contribute to it, if I can, not detract from it. We want to be together, and we will figure out how to do that as we go, like we have been. When she proposed, she was no more asking me to be Ward Cleaver than I'd have been asking her to be June, if I'd proposed."

Chuck reached out and took the binoculars from around Carina's neck. She bowed her head to make it easier. He put them to his eyes, continuing to speak as he did so. "I can't see the future, Carina, how everything works out. I just know I want to be with her, to make her happy. _Damn._ "

Carina snapped to attention. "What is it, Chuck?"

He grimaced, still looking through the glass. "Ryker. He's here…Oh, and he brought a date." Chuck froze. Carina noticed. "Chuck…?" He dropped the glasses to his chest.

"It's Julie Roark."

* * *

 **A/N2** You knew we wouldn't escape the story without a visit from Chuck's ex, now, didn't you? And what is her story, exactly? Tune in next time for Chapter 30—"Dead Set on Destruction".

I really enjoy reviews, so please leave me one, gentle reader!


	30. Chapter 30: Dead Set on Destruction

**A/N1** The stretch run is upon us.

And a good thing too, since I have written about 550K words of fanfiction since September 17 of last year.

If you've been with me since back in the days of CvBC (and some of you have, I know), I thank you heartily. What a kindness! If you came aboard later, thank you heartily too.

But I figure I have just about overstayed my welcome. Visitors, fish, three days, you know. Time to bring all this to an end.

I won't say that I will never write fanfiction again—who knows the future?—but I have other projects that need the time I've been setting aside to scribble away in these alternate dimensions of _Chuck_. But I will likely be around, reading, so you may run across me here or there, even if there are no new stories of mine.

We have one or two Paris chapters left (depending on how I decide to break things up), and then we will go right into our final mission. After it, perhaps there will be a postlude; we'll see how folks feel when we get there.

This chapter's title is again taken from a Hüsker Dü song—again off the _Candy Apple Grey_ album.

Grab hold of yourself—the SuperBall's gonna take some fast, high, unexpected bounces in this chapter.

Don't own Chuck.

* * *

 **Turned Tables**

 _The Eiffel Tower High Mission_

* * *

Friday, February 28, 2008  
Paris, France  
Aboard _Paquebot_ on the Seine  
8:07 pm

* * *

CHAPTER 30 Dead Set on Destruction

* * *

Sarah exhaled slowly, keeping track of Ryker out of the corner of her eye as she continued to slice the strawberries. He seemed more intent on her hands—on the fruit, really—than on her. He moved. Sarah was ready. Tensed.

He grabbed a slice of strawberry and put it in his mouth, thanking her around it. She nodded, but stayed intent on the next strawberry. Ryker stood there chewing. He grew more aware of her.

At just that moment, the kitchen door opened and Ryker turned. Two women entered. One was a very slim, tall redhead—with so much makeup on that for a moment Sarah felt a twinge of coulrophobia. The other was a small brunette with straight hair and glasses—neat and quite attractive.

"There you are," the redhead said, looking at Sartre. "Julie and I were wondering where you had gone."

 _Julie?_ _No, it couldn't be._ Sarah was suddenly tenser than when Ryker had been standing over her.

The brunette added, "Yes, we were. C'mon, they'll be serving dessert soon."

Ryker nodded, walking toward her. "It will be something with strawberries." When Ryker got to Julie, he reached for her hand. Julie looked at him but did not resist. The four of them left the kitchen.

Ilsa came in a moment later, her eyes worried. She looked at Sarah and Sarah gave her a slight shrug. As far as Sarah knew, Ryker had not recognized her. The ill-fitting uniform, the wig, the glasses—and Ryker's mania for strawberries—had been enough to camouflage her, apparently.

Ilsa walked to Sarah's workstation and stopped for a second.

"Sorry, I did not anticipate that as a possibility. But all is well?"

Sarah shook her head. Ilsa looked around and then showed Sarah a miniature camera for a second before putting it back in her pocket. She smiled quickly, tightly. "Old school spying. Miniature camera. Got photos of everyone, mixing. Going now to plant the bug."

"Good luck."

"You too." Ilsa left.

}o{

"Who the hell is _Julie Roark_ , Chuckles?"

Chuck replied, his voice thick with consternation. "She's my girlfriend…I mean she was my girlfriend, years ago, back in college."

Carina's eyes narrowed, and then they became huge. "Your _girlfriend_? Your girlfriend is a… _Ring agent_?"

"No, no," Chuck waved his hand in annoyance, embarrassment, "she was my girlfriend a long time ago at Stanford. We never officially broke up. She just…left…one day. Senior year."

"Oh," Carina chimed, sensing an opening, "so you'll have had some practice with that sort of thing when Sarah leaves…"

Chuck felt his heart clench-and then his teeth. "Carina, enough!" Chuck's tone was unmistakable, verdictive. Final. Forced between his teeth. "That is enough. I understand that Sarah's choice…well, I understand it scares you shitless. I feel for you, and I've made allowances. You've tried to talk me out of this, tried to…seduce me, tried to get Sarah…seduced. But you _surrendered_. I am holding you to it. You've slipped from bizarrely protective of Sarah—and bizarrely self-protective—to just plain mean." He stepped toward her, not aggressively, but as a measure of his sincerity. "Stop."

"But…" Carina hesitated.

"Stop."

Carina hitched, then raised her chin defiantly. Chuck shook his head at her, openly disgusted with her. He threw his hands in the air—exasperated completely, ready to give up on her altogether. His eyes lost all depth as he looked at her. She was no longer allowed to be a participant in his inner life. He turned, looked back at the boat, his shoulders held high, near his ears, furious.

The crew was beginning preparations to embark. Everyone was on board. He watched them work to ready the ship for the cruise. Several minutes passed.

"Chuck," Carina spoke his name softly, and put her hand lightly on one hunched shoulder. He turned to find her changed, contrite. Shutting her out had finally opened her up. She wanted to speak but she was hunting for her voice. She'd lost it when Chuck turned away from her.

"Chuck…Sarah's friendship has been the one _real_ thing…" She put her hands in front of her, making a desperate, imploring gesture, her eyes panicked. Her hands closed into fists, opened, closed again, opened. "Even before…even before _you_ …I knew she could turn away from this life. She didn't know it, but I did. And then I knew when I showed up in Burbank and you turned me down, I knew it was the beginning…of the end," she paused and let out a long sigh.

"I've been shit to her at times, Chuck, just to keep her from knowing about herself what I knew. I pushed and pulled her, dared her and shamed her, competed with her constantly, told her things, made claims about what I have done or wanted to do that weren't…strictly true, all to keep my friend in this life, with me.

"I could see what Graham was doing to her. I could, Chuck. But," her voice broke, "I was sort of on his side. Or on the CIA's side, the spy life's side. For my sake—I kept her moving, I quickened her pace. I wouldn't let her rest or think. I hated Graham, and yet I ended up playing on his damn team.

"She's going to figure all of that out soon, Chuck, and then she'll be done with me, and I…I won't have my friend." She put her arms around herself, her elbows in her hands, fighting with herself and the sudden access of sadness and regret. And shame. Her chin dropped to her chest.

Chuck leaned down, his eyes seeking hers, inviting her to lift her face, to look at him. She did. He opened his gaze, smiled. "Carina, she already has figured all that out. She's known for a while. She more or less knew before Burbank. But she is still your friend, and still wants to be your friend.

"For what it's worth, me too. You don't have to part us to remain part of her life, our life. I've told you. That's what she wants, and it's what I want—not just because she wants it. Be our friend, hers first, but also mine. Add another real thing to your life: me." She nodded. He leaned down and kissed her cheek. She smiled and let her arms go slack.

She shook off her out-of-character moment. "C'mon, Chuckles. Let's get in that speedboat. You haven't speedboated until you've speedboated with me." She gave Chuck an infectious laugh. He laughed too, but shook his head as they climbed aboard.

"That's what I'm afraid of."

}o{

But, amazingly, the boat trip all went to plan.

The boat crawled slowly along the river but without incident. At around 8:30 pm, a large part of the party (including Julie, Chuck noticed through the binoculars) went to the observation deck to enjoy the view as _Paquebot_ eased past Notre Dame, past the Museum d'Orsay, past the Grand Palace, and past the Eiffel Tower. Chuck looked up at the last with so much emotion that Carina punched his shoulder. "What happened to you up there, Chuckles?"

He grinned sheepishly. "I got kissed up there, I mean really kissed…"

"Sarah, I assume?"

"Uh, yeah, Sarah…"

Carina shook her head slowly. "Mercy. Spies in love."

}o{

Sarah walked quickly to the spot where she was to meet Chuck. She could see Ryker and Julie, shaking hands with Sartre, Ryker looking pleased, Julie looking blank. Ilsa had planted the bug and retrieved it. She and Carina were heading to Martin to review what had been picked up.

Sarah slipped into the driver's seat; Chuck was already in the passenger seat. A small bag of equipment was in the back seat, moved there from the trunk by Chuck. They waited for Ryker's car, a heavy, black Mercedes. It went past them a few minutes later and Sarah eased the small, brown Renault out behind the Mercedes, careful to keep a car or two between them. As Sarah drove, she told Chuck about the boat trip. Chuck told Sarah the Julie she met was indeed Julie Roark. Chuck quickly related the conversation he had with Carina—there wasn't really anything else for him to tell. Sarah smiled at the story.

The Mercedes stopped in front of the Park Hyatt. Sarah pulled into an open spot on the street a short distance away from the hotel entrance. No one got out of the Mercedes for a moment or two. Then the driver got out, came around the car, and opened the rear door.

Julie stepped out. She talked to the driver for a moment, and walked into the lobby. The driver went back around the car and got in.

Chuck looked at Sarah. "They're separating?" She nodded quickly, restarting the Renault. "Looks that way. Huh."

Chuck grabbed the door handle. "I'm going after her, Sarah."

"Chuck…" She turned to him, indecision on her face—and worry. Maybe a hint of something else.

"I'll be careful. You too. Ryker killed Graham. It looks like he got a ranking position in the Ring. Just figure out where he is going. I won't talk to Julie. I just want to see if I can figure out what she is doing here. I'll text you. Pick me up here."

Sarah pinched her lips, then agreed. Ryker's car was about to turn onto the street. "Ok. Figure out what room she is in. Then get out of there and wait for me." Chuck nodded once and jumped out. Sarah drove after the Mercedes.

Chuck hurried into the lobby. He looked immediately to the elevators. Julie was not there; he'd hoped she would be still waiting. She was nowhere to be seen as he scanned the lobby. He walked to the front desk, doffing his hurry and donning a harried, apologetically lost look.

"Um…ah…hey, my girlfriend is supposed to be in Paris now, staying here, but I got into town late and my phone's gone dead and I forgot my charger and so I can't get a text from her or call her and she's gonna be pissed with a capital 'Paris'." Chuck grinned, a little crazily. "Dude, could you hook me up and ring her room for me? Julie's her name. Julie Roark. Pretty in a sexy-nerdy, I-betcha-wanna-see-my-brains way, y'know?" He gave an exaggerated, ridiculously conspiratorial wink, like a cartoon character.

The man at the desk gazed at Chuck with true Gallic coolness. But he clearly decided he'd rather help than hear more, so typed for a minute, then picked up the phone. Chuck watched him dial without looking like he did. He figured out her room number from the number the man dialed. Pause. "I'm sorry…sir. There is no answer." The man seemed more disappointed than Chuck pretended to be.

"Well, shit, that's ok. Maybe she stepped out for a minute. I'll just wait in the bar…try again in a moment." He turned and walked toward the bar that adjoined the lobby. He walked in, trying to adjust to the dim light inside after the bright lights of the lobby. He stood and blinked.

"Chuck? _Chuck Carmichael_? Chuck!"

And Julie Roark was standing in front of him. He flashed back on the last time he saw her. "Thank you," she'd said. "You're welcome," he'd said. Not exactly _Here's looking at you, kid_. Infinitely lamer. The surprise on her face was total, genuine.

"Julie? Julie Roark?" She stepped to him. She grabbed him. She kissed him. It all seemed like one motion.

}o{

Chuck put his hands on her shoulders and he pushed her back gently. She had her eyes closed, her cheeks were deep red. She opened her eyes, began to recover herself. She glanced away from him for a second, then back.

"I'm sorry, Chuck. I just…reacted. I never thought I'd see you again. But here you are, tonight of all nights, in Paris…"

Her recovery continued. "What are you doing in Paris, Chuck? What are you doing...in general? How have you been?" The questions somersaulted over each other, allowing no space for an answer. She grabbed his hand and pulled him into a booth. She could barely contain herself. Giddy—she was giddy. She never let go of his hand, but instead wrapped both of hers around it. "It's like a dream…"

But then a shadow crossed her face. "We shouldn't talk in public. I'm in room 7002, Chuck. Follow me up in a few minutes." She pulled his hand to her face, holding it with both of hers still, and kissed it, her eyes misty. "See you in a bit."

Chuck watched her walk away. She still seemed the girl he saw last at Stanford. He put his hands to his head, pulled his hair, trying to recover himself. Her finding him and her reaction to him had been two big surprises, boom, boom, and he was shaken.

What should he do?

She knew he was here. If he left, that might be worse than going ahead and talking to her. If he talked to her, though, what would he say? He had a backlog of questions ( _understatement_ )—and as they came to mind in a torrent, his anger at her rekindled.

 _What the hell?_

She walks out of his life after making love to him for the first and only time, and then she greets him years later as if it were the next morning. _As if it were the next goddamn morning_.

There was no doubting it: she was glad to see him, but she'd also been afraid of seeing him, or of being seen with him.

 _What should he do_?

He was not a man given to presumption, but that greeting made him worry that if he went to her room, by the time he got there, she'd have changed into something that would make her more comfortable—and him far less comfortable.

What would Sarah make of it?

Chuck wanted answers from Julie, yes, but he no longer wanted Julie. He was shaken, but not stirred. Sarah was the one. No one would change that, no one could change that, not even Julie Roark.

But he wanted answers from Julie, not just about their past (his and hers), but her present—about tonight, and about Ryker, and about Roark Industries, the Ring (and the Ring tech).

She was at the crossroads, somehow, of so much strangeness, of so much that had gone wrong or was wrong in his life.

His curiosity got the best of him. Maybe he could find a way to end all this. Now. Tonight.

He got up, left the bar, and went to the elevator. It opened as he arrived at the doors. He got on and punched the button for Julie's floor. The doors closed.

A tall man stepped from behind a lobby pillar, idly scratching his goatee. He watched the ascending numbers on the elevator display. When they stopped, he noted the number, nodding his head to himself. With a slow, insectoid gait, he marched to the nearest stairwell door.

}o{

Ryker's car drove. And drove. And drove some more. They were well out on the edge of the city before it pulled into an empty lot in front of a hotel, a hotel on the opposite end of the lodging food-chain from the Park Hyatt.

In fact, it was less hotel and more flophouse, if the look of the place was a trustworthy guide. The Mercedes in front of the hotel—its name was _Nuits Blanche_ (were they kidding?)—looked worth more than the building.

Sarah noticed two women standing near the entrance. They both perked up, stood at attention, when the Mercedes rolled into the parking lot. Ryker got out of the car. As he approached the entrance, each of the two women acknowledged him, but neither moved toward him or spoke to him.

And then she realized—the women were not prostitutes, as they were dressed to seem, but guards. Professionals of a different kind. Neither of them had looked toward Sarah's Renault, luckily. They'd been focused on Ryker's car and then Ryker. They were there to keep people out, protect the door, but not to maintain any real perimeter or to survey the surroundings.

Even so, they represented a serious obstacle. Sarah knew that she should probably just note the address and move on. When the Mercedes pulled away, she was strongly tempted to do just that. But it was Ryker— _the threat_ to her mom and to Molly. He was a bar across her exit from the spy life.

She grabbed the small bag Chuck had put in the car. She fished in it for a moment and found the small binoculars he had stowed in it. She looked more closely at the building. No cameras that she could see, at least not outside. No guards except the two women. If she could get past them…

If she could get past them… _what?_ She had no idea who was inside, or how many. But she had gotten into and out of places with more guns and guards than she was likely to face here—and she'd done it once at Ryker's behest. The thought of turning his 'weapon', herself, on him, had a grim irony that attracted her.

Placing the binoculars on the floor, she reached into the bag and retrieved her pistol and some ammo. She shoved a mag in the well, and put two in her pocket. Retrieving the silencer from the bag, she screwed it to the barrel.

She put her hand on the door handle—and stopped.

Did she really want to do this?

She had a fiancé now, a life waiting for her outside of the darkness, if she could get there. She wanted to get there; she wanted it desperately. Carina had done Sarah one service since they'd been in Paris: her hectoring and heckling had been a gut-check.

Sarah was sure of her decision—there had been no wavering. None. Chuck was the one. That hadn't been news to Sarah, and Carina hadn't intended to temper Sarah's resolve, but that is what she had done.

But now, so resolved, what was she going to do about Ryker?

She had a chance to end this business with him. Now. Tonight.

Who knew how much trouble he might cause if he came after Sarah or Chuck with the resources of the Ring at his disposal? If he got away, her anxiety for her mother and Molly would only increase. She opened the Renault's door and slipped out, into the dark.

 _I love you, Chuck. I will survive this._ _I will be in our bed tonight._

}o{

Chuck got off the elevator and check the room number signs. Julie's room was down the hallway to the left. He took a deep breath, exhaled slowly, and walked to the room. He knocked softly, and heard her muffled, "Come in!"

He walked in. The room was beautiful, all reds and golds. He did not see Julie. Then he heard her call out from the bathroom. "Be right there." She had turned on her clock/radio to a station playing American music. Chuck made a face. "Faithfully" by Journey was playing. _Gah_.

Chuck grabbed one of the armchairs and pulled it as far from the bed as he could. He sat down. A tense second or two later, Julie walked in. She had a towel in her hands, and her face was pink—freshly scrubbed. She had rarely worn much makeup but she had washed off the little she had been wearing earlier. Her hair was damp against her forehead, but dry otherwise. She was still wearing the dress she had been wearing since Chuck saw her in the binoculars. Her feet were bare.

She put the towel on the bed and then stood, arms akimbo, and smiled at him. "Chuck. Chuck. I just can't believe it. It's biblical…" She narrowed her eyes at herself, and giggled, "…well, maybe that's not the best phrase. I just mean it's like a miracle, you just appearing. Now. Tonight."

The shadow that crossed her face crossed it again. She went to the door and locked it, using the bar guard lock. Her countenance had brightened when she turned back around.

She padded across the floor and sat down on the coffee table, near Chuck's knees. After she sat down, she considered his face. "I'm sorry, Chuck, so sorry, about how things between us, well, how they ended. I owe you a story. Walking out of your room that night was the hardest thing I have ever done. I have never forgiven myself for it. Never. Sleeping with you that night was the most selfish thing I have ever done, but…"

Chuck started to respond—and the door burst open.

He heard the spit of a silencer and saw fluff from his chair explode into the air. He tackled Julie, taking her to the floor, and landing atop her. A heavy vase from the table landed beside them. Chuck grabbed it, reared back, and heaved it toward the door.

He heard a gasp of pain, followed by two thumps. Chuck leaped to his feet. Anatole Marcel was standing in the doorway, his gun on the floor, the broken vase in pieces all around it. Chuck dove for the gun.

 _I can't believe I'm fighting another damn clown, Sarah!_

}o{

Sarah went down the street, away from the flophouse, until she knew the guards had no sight line, then she crossed over. She worked carefully down to the next-to-the-last building before the empty parking lot.

There was a narrow alley between it and the last building. Sarah pulled her pistol and started down it. The air reeked, garbage had been piled up but not yet collected. Watching her footing so as not to make accidental noise, she moved quickly down the alley to the back of the building. There was access behind the last building that took her to the side of the flophouse, but no obvious point of entry. But there were windows, dark and heavy. As she got closer, she could tell that the first-floor windows had all been spray-painted black from the inside. The one nearest to her seemed to be to a room in which no light was on.

She went back to the alley and grabbed a small bag of garbage, reeking foodstuffs. Holding it against the window, she struck the glass sharply with the handle of her pistol. The garbage bag muffled some of the sounds of the breaking glass and insured that all the pieces and shards went inside, not outside.

Sarah put the bag on the ground and took off the white jacket she was still wearing. She had a t-shirt underneath it. She put the jacket across the bottom of the window, and, after peering inside and seeing nothing and no one, she hoisted herself up and into the room. The room was bare except for a sink and a cot. She pulled the jacket off the window and put it back on.

Sarah went to the door and listened. She heard no sound, except the distant sound of a cheap transistor radio. Putting her hand over her own mouth, Sarah stifled a laugh. The radio was playing an American station, and playing Johnny Rivers, "Secret Agent Man". _Sabre's back, but without her knives…and without Chesko._

She opened the door. The hallway stank of old sweat and growing mildew. The floor was covered with a cheap red carpet, with stains of various sizes and colors dotting it irregularly. She could hear the radio better now. Another old song came on—Pink Floyd's "I Wish You Were Here".

 _So, you think you can tell  
Heaven from hell?_

Sarah's intuition told her to head toward the front of the building, away from the music. She crept down the hallway, shuddering a little when she realized that her footfalls were squeezing liquid up out of the disgusting carpet. _I so don't want to know._

The hallway ended in a swinging door with a round window at eye-level. Sarah got to it and peeked out. A couple of naked bulbs hung from wires above a dingy lobby. There was a front desk, and stairs off to the side, heading up and heading down. The desk was unoccupied. She could see no cameras.

Sarah pushed the door open. She could see the backs of the two women on the sidewalk through the grime-streaked doors. She whispered her way across the lobby and, again following her intuition, started down the stairs.

At the bottom of the stairs was another door like the one at the end of the hallway. Sarah peeked again through a round window. Another long hallway. Sarah's guess was that it had originally been the utility section of the hotel. But this long hallway had a clean floor—no awful carpet. No cameras. And the door at the end was shiny and new. It was not fully closed.

Pushing on the swinging door gently but firmly, Sarah opened it enough to enter the hallway. She immediately heard Ryker's voice. At first, she thought he was talking to someone with him, on the other side of the new door. But then she realized he was on the phone. She listened as she moved closer.

"Yes, she went with me. She understands what she must do. Sartre sent Marcel to keep an eye on her." _Oh, shit, Chuck!_ "The folks got a look at her. Yes, yes. After all, what choice does she have? If I were you, I'd leave her alone tonight. Ok. I will report to you again tomorrow." He ended the call and then he did speak to someone behind the door with him.

"My car will be back soon. Shut all this down. Make sure there is no trace of us left. We're moving to a better Ring safehouse that Sartre has made available. This was a good place to hide but I'm ready for decent lodgings—and _so tired_ of the stench. Tell the girls to disappear for a couple of days; I'll text them when I need them. Let's get to the safehouse. All we can do now is wait.

"The attack on _Castle_ (what a stupid name!) started a few minutes ago." Sarah froze. "Graham's info was key. We finally assembled the attack team. By morning, the world should be Intersect-free; the entire team will be dead—but particularly that freak analyst." Ryker opened the door as he said this. He looked down the hall and saw Sarah, who had crouched on one knee.

He knew he was dead before he was.

She followed her shot into the room, sprinting the few yards necessary. There were two men, both with their arms full of electronics. She shot each in the leg. They both fell, the electronics smashing on the hard, bare floor. She looked down on Ryker's body for a split second as she turned to go back up the hallway. He'd been the bogeyman in her thoughts for a long time. Strange, him, _dead_ —you never really think you can kill the bogeyman…

She needed to get out, needed to get to Chuck. She ran back up the hallway, ignoring the cries of the two men.

 _Chuck! Ellie! Frost! Stephen!_

 _Chuck's family, my family_.

She hit the front doors with her shoulder, sending them swinging outward. The two women whipped around.

Sarah had no time for niceties. She chose the one who got around first, firing into her, center mass. The women were professionals but their dresses concealed nothing really—certainly not body armor. But the other woman, cool, used the time it took Sarah to shoot her companion to get her gun out and fire. But Sarah had tumbled, Sabre-like, tucking herself and then rolling up onto her knees. She fired again, killing the second woman.

The shoulder Sarah tucked into had gone numb from the impact with the sidewalk. She shoved her gun into her pants, and pulled out her phone. She dialed Chuck. No answer. _No, no, no_! Not this close to _out_. Not this close to _free_.

And then she saw, as she climbed behind the wheel of the Renault, and heard sirens in the distance, that she had missed seven calls from Martin. There was one text.

 _The Ring has attacked Castle. I was not able to warn them in time._

* * *

 **A/N2** Sorry, a bunch of little cliffhangers leading to a big one. Short too, but I figured it was long enough. I'm a little breathless, and I wrote it!

Love to hear your thoughts—please leave a review.

Tune in next time for Chapter 31 "Too Far Down". What happened back in DC? What was the outcome of Clown vs. Clown? What was Julie about to say? All this and more…


	31. Chapter 31: Too Far Down?

**A/N1** Still in the City of Lights for this chapter and for one more. Then the scene will shift to our final venue, and we will begin our final mission— _The Land of Talk Mission_. But sufficient unto the day is the chapter thereof, or something like that. Lots going on here as various questions get answered, various problems addressed.

I thank you for your continued reading and reviewing. This has been a long, involuted story, and many of you have commented on every chapter. Humbling. I hope you have been entertained—and, if it is not hoping too much,—spurred here and there to thought by the story.

I especially value your time, since there are currently several other terrific stories going or recently finished. _Grayroc_ , _halfachance, Marc vun Kannon, Steampunk Chuckster, David Carner_ and _WvonB_ are all writing or have recently written tales worth your time. They've been worth mine. I've read or been reading all while working on this story. I have probably left someone out; if so, apologies.

Chapter title here is another song title from the Husker Du _Candy Apple Grey_ album. I've been compiling a TT soundtrack of sorts on my tumblr, fragmentsofruin. Check it out.

Don't own Chuck, still. Just a guy with a Chuck problem and a fiction problem….but I am trying to get better!

* * *

 **Turned Tables**

 _The Eiffel Tower High Mission_

* * *

Friday, February 28, 2008  
Paris, France  
Near _Nuits Blanche_ (Flophouse)  
11:33 pm

* * *

CHAPTER 31 Too Far Down?

* * *

Sarah tossed the phone on the passenger seat, cranked the Renault, jammed it into gear.

She couldn't do anything about DC, about Castle, but _Chuck_ —she had to be able to do something about him. He hadn't known Marcel was at the Park Hyatt. Maybe he'd gotten in and out before Marcel arrived or saw him. Maybe. Once she was headed back to the hotel, she grabbed the phone and dialed Chuck. No answer. _Damn, damn, damn._

She dialed Martin. He answered. "Sarah! Did you get my text? I can't get a response from Chuck. It's awful! How can I tell him? Oh, God, Sarah…how can I tell him?" He sounded shell-shocked, barely coherent. He didn't pause for an answer until the final question.

"Martin, let's try to control what we can." Sarah's comment started as a growl but softened. She needed his help. He needed to get some control of himself. "Martin!"

"Ok, Sarah, ok," she heard him gulp, "what do you need me to do?" He wasn't all together yet, but at least he wasn't in bits and pieces. "I need you to let me know if you're still getting a location on Chuck's phone. Where is he?"

There was silence on the other end. She hoped he was checking as she asked.

"No…No location. Last time I had one was about an hour ago. He was at…the Park Hyatt." She heard Martin's voice thicken. She was going to lose him. "Martin, stay on the job. Where are Ilsa and Carina?"

"Here—with me. We listened to the Ring meeting—that's how we found out about Castle."

"Good, let me talk to Carina, Martin." She heard jostling.

"Sarah, what the hell is going on? We can't make anything of Martin. What's _Castle_? _Who_ are the people with Frost?"

"No time right now, Carina. Tell Ilsa to let DGSI know that Ring-related cleanup needs to be done at _Nuits Blanche._ Yes, White Nights. I know. I need you to take the van and get as near the Park Hyatt as you can. I will be there in," Sarah looked at the dashboard clock, "ten minutes. 11:55 or so. Chuck went in to get Julie Roark's room number. I can't get him to answer his phone. And if you _say it,_ Carina…"

But Carina said nothing except, "I will be there _asap_ , Sarah."

Sarah gunned the Renault, weaving in and out of traffic, hare among tortoises.

}o{

Chuck and Marcel arrived at the gun at the same time—but it was not quite a tie. Marcel got the handle, the trigger, Chuck got the silenced barrel. He pushed it hard, away from himself. Marcel had crouched to grab the gun. Chuck was on his knees.

Marcel tried to use the fact that he was on his feet to his advantage, leaning his weight over onto Chuck, trying to get the barrel aimed at Chuck. But, disadvantaged in position as he was, Chuck was the stronger of the two. Marcel couldn't manage to get the barrel where he wanted it and, slowly, Chuck forced Marcel up and back, until Chuck could stand.

Chuck twisted suddenly, turning his body so that his back was to Marcel and the gun. The gun, held in both Marcel's two hands and Chuck's two hands, was pointed out past Chuck. Luckily, Julie had remained on the ground, although her head was up and she was watching in mute, terrified fascination.

Chuck didn't think Marcel intended Julie harm—he'd shot at Chuck when Julie would've been the easier target—but she was in danger of being shot accidentally. Marcel was as tall as, maybe an inch or so taller than Chuck, but he was twenty pounds lighter. Putting his foot in front of Marcel's, Chuck wrenched the lighter man around, throwing him off-balance. As Marcel fell, Chuck twisted the gun _hard_. He felt and heard Marcel's wrist pop, and heard Marcel exhale in pain.

Chuck had the gun. Marcel was on the floor, holding his wrist, writhing. Chuck did not think he broke the wrist, but he knew it had to hurt. He'd sprained his wrist badly in junior high and still remembered it. Marcel looked up into the the gun and the fight left him immediately. He groaned.

Julie scampered up and came to stand beside Chuck. "I guess Ryker or Sartre must've sent this clown to watch over me." She was clearly still frightened, but she was marshaling her forces.

Chuck started to giggle, maniacally, from the adrenaline. "You know that this clown really is a _clown_." Julie looked at him, puzzled. "Well, he teaches clowning at a clown school. You know what they say, those who can, clown, and those who can't clown, teach clowning." He giggled again.

Julie put a hand on his arm. "Are you ok?"

Chuck took a second. "Yeah, yeah…Yes, I am ok. Just adrenalized there for a minute. Sorry." He looked down at Marcel again. Then he turned his head to Julie.

"Um, if you don't mind, frisk him, please." Julie's eyes got big, but she bent down and started patting Marcel down. She found a magazine of ammo and Marcel's phone. Chuck checked the phone. It was password protected. Marcel's password was 'Marceau', Chuck's second guess. Shaking his head at the man, Chuck went through the call log. Marcel had sent a picture to Sartre and to Ryker, a picture of Chuck talking to Julie. "Shit."

Julie leaned over and saw the picture. "Oh, no, Chuck. That's bad. That's very bad." Her face showed more fear than it had even during the fight for the gun.

"We'll talk about that, Julie. Marcel, get up." Marcel did. Chuck made him sit down in the arm chair. Then Chuck walked behind him and clubbed him in the temple with the butt of the pistol. Marcel slumped in the chair. Julie whimpered. Chuck turned greenish.

"God, Chuck, what did you just do. What…who… _are_ you?" Her voice was wavering between fear and respect.

"Well, in my case, that's a little hard to answer."

She stepped back from him, put her hand over her mouth. Then she moved it to speak. "You are an…agent. You are here because of the Ring."

Chuck was about to answer when he noticed his phone on the floor, smashed. He bent down to pick it up. It was useless, dead. Not good, not good at all. He needed to text Sarah. Or call her. He should probably call Martin too.

But he wasn't happy about having to use the room phone to call the room phone at the _Athéné._ He decided to do it—what choice did he really have. Sarah had no idea what room he was in. Of course, it was Sarah: she would figure it out. But he didn't have time.

He also still had the phrase "the Ring" ringing in his ears in Julie's voice. He needed to talk to her about that right away. He heard Martin answer the phone and in a guarded voice say hello.

"Martin, it's Chuck. I…"

"Chuck," Martin sounded like he was drowning, verging on tears.

 _What was going on? Sarah? Oh, no._ "Martin, Sarah, is she ok?" Chuck nearly screamed the words in the phone.

Martin croaked out a yes. "She's on her way to you. Where are you?"

"The Park Hyatt—Room 7002."

"I'll call her. Carina's coming too."

Chuck hung up. Julie had shut the door, even though part of the frame was busted. Then she sat down on the bed. "My…partners will be here soon." He checked Marcel; he was still out cold. Chuck went and sat down on the bed next to Julie.

Julie turned her head to him, raising an eyebrow. "Sarah? Would that be _Sarah Walker_?"

"How? Oh. Right. The Ring. Bryce Larkin." Julie's eyes flicked away. "Look, could you start over and do this for me—chronologically? You know, like this: 'Once upon a time, there was a couple, Chuck and Julie, who went to college at Stanford…' And don't worry, I know there's no 'happily ever after 'part." He saw hurt in her eyes. He needn't have said that. _Idiot_.

"Right. Ok. I'll ty to make this short. But it's…ah…messy."

"This story is not going to make any sense unless you understand my dad. Ted Roark is not a man to be crossed or disobeyed-ever. I was in many ways a pampered child, allowed to do what I wanted, every desire satisfied, so long as what I wanted or desired did not conflict with my father's plans for me.

"I wanted to go across the country, to Boston, to MIT, but dad said no. He wanted me nearby so Stanford it was. He also had donated a huge amount of money to Stanford, and so he had clout there. Just one example of what I mean." She glanced at Chuck and he gestured for her to continue.

"He was very…picky about who I dated, so picky that mostly I didn't. I never met anyone worth facing the pressure. But when I got to Stanford, he couldn't watch over me constantly. I had some freedom—freedom to date who I wanted, if he didn't know. But I never found anyone I really…cared about until you." She smiled shyly but didn't look at Chuck.

"That I really cared about you meant I had to hide you from Dad. I did—for a while. He visited campus and I kept you two from ever running into each other. I knew you wouldn't like me hiding you, so I hid his visits from you…

I kept that going successfully for a while…Then, remember, we went to the spring football game, the Cardinal and White game, and one of our friends took pictures of us. She gave me the pictures later, as I was heading out to meet dad. I met him at an off-campus coffee shop. I left my backpack at the table and went to the bathroom. When I got back, he'd been through my bag and found the pictures. He recognized you." Chuck knitted his brows, curious.

"I didn't know it, but he knew your dad. There was bad blood between them—I still don't know why—but he _melted down_. Full Chernobyl. No joke. I was _forbidden_ to see you, to have anything more to do with you. He not only promised me he'd take me out of school, he made it clear to me that he'd be willing to… _harm_ you too. At first, although he scared me awfully, I thought he'd maybe come around. He can be unpredictable. And…well, I didn't want to give you up, Chuck. I loved…loved you. So, I made us double-super-secret, although you still had no idea.

"But I knew we were doomed. That eventually dad would ruin it. But I…I tried to have you but not to have you, to keep the way I felt in check. I don't know if that makes any sense. I was with you but I knew I couldn't keep you, so, I wouldn't make love to you. I knew that if I did, I wouldn't recover, that losing you would destroy me." She twisted her hands in her lap.

"But as I feared he would, as I knew he would, dad found out I was still with you. He yanked me from school. He arranged for me to finish from Europe. He did it just before our final semester of senior year, in the middle of my packing to return to school, to you.

"I snuck out of the house and drove to Stanford, to you, and I went to your room and I made love to you—because I couldn't stand the thought of not knowing you that way, at least one time. I shouldn't have done it. It was selfish, wildly unfair to you. Probably to me too. And as much as I regret it, I don't regret it…I, well, I did it. But I am sorry, Chuck. Regret it or not, I know I mistreated you.

"And, for what it's worth, I rarely hear anyone say, 'You're welcome', without thinking of you and reliving a little of that night. And the hurt of it. Maybe that's been my punishment. You might not have thought so, but it was quite a parting line. It stuck with me. Sometimes, it's not just the words, it's the context, the timing, _the tune_. I knew you meant it—and given how intimate what passed between us that night was—to be welcome to _that_ , it meant everything, Chuck. Even though remembering it still hurts me."

Chuck thought for a moment how much of a difference it makes to a moment whether you understand it or not. She wasn't wrong about him meaning it when he said it. He did. But he had no idea that she was leaving, really, much less leaving for good. He had only regretted the line. He never imagined it sticking to her.

"I got back in my car and drove home and…submitted. It's what I do. He's too much for me.

"I went with my dad to Europe the next day. I couldn't contact you; I had to quit you, Chuck. I found out not long after we got to Europe that dad was mixed up in the Fulcrum. It took me a long time to fully understand fully what that meant.

"On one of his trips to Stanford, Dad had met Bryce. He tolerated him for some reason. Maybe because he so wasn't _you._ Bryce had joined the CIA during his junior year and was at the Farm between that year and senior year. They wanted him to finish, so sent him back. Dad met him that fall. I think Dad somehow found out Bryce was an agent. He never wanted Bryce as a son-in-law, but for some reason, he encouraged Bryce's pursuit of me. He even flew Bryce over to visit me.

"I now believe Dad was cultivating Bryce, that he thought Bryce could be turned. Dad was willing to use me as part of the plan—but Dad was willing to play the slow game. He's good at it. He wins. It is what he does. I had no idea about Dad's plan for Bryce or about Bryce's being CIA, not then. And like I said, I still didn't understand what Fulcrum was. I had yet to hear about the Ring.

"Byrce kept at me, seducing me. Eventually, we started a…relationship—to the extent that we could have one. I was still in love with someone else," her eyes cut to and away from Chuck, "and Bryce (I eventually found out) didn't think that spies fall in love. He liked me and, more important, he wanted me, and we started up an on-again, off-again, when-you're-nearby, convenience-with-a-dollop-of- _mild affection_ sort of thing."

Chuck took a minute to sift through all of that. "When did you realize Bryce was an agent?"

"At the same time I realized what the Fulcrum was. Dad had successfully recruited Byrce into Fulcrum. I hadn't seen Bryce in a while—months, I guess—and he later told me he'd been…partnered…with this _Sarah Walker_. Bryce would never say much about her. A little. Impressive but…scary. An assassin. A cold killer. It was clear they had been together, but that Bryce had bailed on her. He joined Fulcrum after that." She stood, walked around for a minute, then sat back down where she had been.

"Look, I knew about Fulcrum and Bryce—but I was not part of that. Dad kept pressuring me, telling me that this shadowy organization was my inheritance, that he'd been grooming me since I was little to take over one day. But I refused.

"When I did, Dad stopped trying to cultivate Bryce. I guess he had thought Bryce would bring me over with him, but when I refused, Dad shut off Bryce's access to him. Dad's clever, like I've said—he turned Bryce thinking Bryce would, in turn, turn me. Lots of turning. Like that Byrd's song." Chuck laughed involuntarily. That was a moment of the old Julie, the one from Stanford.

"Bryce and I kept seeing each other, as we had been, but I had to keep Bryce and Dad from running into each other. _All that time_ , Chuck, to end up in the same position, almost, that I'd been in with you. But without the feelings.

"When Bryce got captured in Burbank…" Julie was watching Chuck's face carefully, "Oh, of course, that was you—you were involved." Chuck gave her no more of a reaction, so she continued.

"When Bryce got captured, and Fulcrum got dismantled, Dad told me about the Ring. Fulcrum had always been expendable—a clever bit of screening camouflage for the Ring, the true organization, the true seats of power.

"That, Dad explained, was my ultimate birthright. I still refused, but now Dad has told me that time to choose my destined life is over. The life is claiming me. I was at that…party tonight to be seen, since Dad is about to install me as the head of the European division of the Ring. What I want does not matter. Ryker, the man I was with," Julie's face showed distaste, "was supposed to be the person who ran things until—as Dad put it—I had bloodied my hands. Tonight was my last night of relative freedom. Tomorrow I was going to be in the Ring whether I wanted to be or not. I was going to be at the table when decisions were made, treated as responsible for those decisions, until I decided to take responsibility for them." She shuddered—all over.

"That's why you showing up seemed miraculous. Like the best part of my past had come to rescue me from the wreck of my future." She turned a guardedly hopeful face on him.

Chuck stared at Marcel, still out on the floor. That was a complicated story. Messy. He wanted to believe it.

He did believe it. Julie was being conscripted into the spy life after being an unknowing and then an unwilling camp follower for years. The seep of this damn life—again. It was everywhere he turned.

"Julie, I…" Chuck's question was interrupted by a soft knock on the door. The knock caused the door, broken by Marcel, to swing inward. Sarah stood there, fear in her face and her posture.

When she saw him, she rocketed to him, tackling him backward onto the bed, landing on top of him bodily. She kissed his face several times. He could feel tears. She was relieved to find him ok, obviously, but something more was involved. He felt an immediate sense of panic.

When his lips were free from hers, he asked immediately, "What is it, Sarah?"

"Chuck, you're ok?"

"Yes, baby, I am."

Julie tensed. Chuck noticed her but had no time for explanations. "What's wrong?"

"We need to get back. The Ring attacked Castle. I don't know anything more than that."

}o{

Chuck whitened. Julie gasped.

"Castle?" she said, mouthing the word like it was from a foreign language. "I heard Ryker mention that on the phone…"

Sarah rolled off Chuck, so that she was on his opposite side from Julie. The situation was bizarre and beyond tense—sort of beyond precedent.

Sarah grabbed Chuck's hand. She looked across him to Julie. "Julie. I'm Sarah."

Julie nodded one time. Sarah looked from Julie down to Marcel. Then she reoriented on Chuck. He had still said nothing.

"C'mon. Julie, you are coming with us." Sarah's phone beeped. Carina had arrived. She was on her way up. "Chuck, Carina's coming. Help her with Marcel." She needed to keep him focused until they could talk—and it would probably be better to talk back at the _Athéné._ Sarah knew nothing more, really, than she had said. Maybe Martin would know more when they arrived—although the news, if there was any, might be bad.

Chuck got up and stood over Marcel, clearly unclear about what to do—even about what he was doing. He was in shock.

Sarah saw Julie watching Chuck too. "What did Ryker say about Castle, Julie?"

"Nothing I understood. He was talking about it on the phone before we got on the boat. He asked if the go-ahead had been given. I didn't hear the answer. I suspect he was going to talk about it at the meeting. But I was ushered out before it started."

Carina came into the room, noticing the broken door. She went back out and checked the hallway, then re-entered, pushing the door to. She had a small bag in her hands. She immediately went to Marcel and dropped the bag beside him. She knelt, opened the bag, and pulled out a syringe. She injected Marcel. As she did, she looked up at Julie. "Hey, Julie, Carina."

'Um…hey." Julie's face betrayed her growing confusion.

"Chuck," Carina spoke his name firmly, "help me pick him up. If anyone asks, he's sick and we're taking him to the hospital." Chuck nodded slowly.

Sarah turned to Julie. "Grab some things. Do you need me to help?" Julie shook her head. She grabbed her suitcase and put it on the bed. After opening it, she went into the bathroom, coming back a few seconds later with toiletries that she just dropped in. "I'm ready," she reported, zipping the zipper of the suitcase.

Sarah and Julie left first. Chuck, Carina, and Marcel came next. They all made it out, although the Chuck and Carina, ferrying Marcel, got some looks coming through the lobby. They put Marcel in the van. Sarah and Julie got in the Renault. They all headed back to their hotel.

}o{

Chuck only began to recover when he got back in the suite at the _Athéné_. Carina did not go up with him; she waited downstairs to turn Marcel over to a DGSI team, to be taken to a holding cell.

Sarah and Julie were already in the room. Julie was on the couch, her suitcase standing in front of her. She seemed lost, anchored, to the extent that she was, to Chuck, who she was staring at.

"Martin!" Chuck said, charging at the small, bearded man. "What the hell happened? What's going on?"

"The recording of the meeting—the bug. At the meeting, Sartre told the Ring folks that Castle was being attacked, their nemesis, Doc, your Dad, the Intersect, would be dead soon. When I heard, I immediately tried to contact Castle but got no response. I did everything I could think of. Then, I called Beckman; it was all I could think to do. An NSA response team is on the scene. I am waiting for a report. I don't know any more than that, Chuck." Martin grabbed Chuck and hugged him—for both their sakes.

Sarah watched for a moment, then she went and hugged Chuck after Martin let go of him. Martin turned back to his computer. Ilsa, who had been standing off to the side of the suite, poured some coffee from a thermos into a paper cup and took it to Julie. "You are Julie Roark, correct? I am Ilsa, and that," she pointed to Martin, hunched over the keyboard, "is Martin."

Julie took the coffee and sipped it before she spoke. "Thanks, I'm catching up slowly." She put the coffee down for a moment to slip off her jacket. When it was off, Julie frowned and reached into a pocket, retrieving her phone. She handed it to Ilsa. It was shut off. Ilsa looked up, confused. "Can you check it for bugs? My dad uses it to track me, I think."

Ilsa took the phone to Chuck, who was still holding and being held by Sarah. She told him what Julie said. Chuck reached for the phone and carried it to a table. He began quickly to disassemble it. As he worked, he told Ilsa to sweep Julie and her suitcase—and he looked at Julie apologetically, but she shrugged that it was fine. Julie and her bags were clean.

Chuck found a tracking device in the phone, one that used the phone's power to work. Julie had turned it off when Ryker picked her up and had never turned it back on, so it could not have broadcast her movements. Chuck removed the tracking device carefully, then walked to the bathroom and flushed it.

When he got back, Martin turned to the room: "The NSA team is reporting. Beckman has patched the uplink to us."

Everyone pressed together. Chuck reached for Sarah and pulled her to him. She was aching for him, throbbing with fear about what might be revealed. Even Julie moved closer. The screen blinked a couple of times, the picture rolled, and there on the screen was Major John Casey, in battle gear.

Martin said it. " _Casey?_ "

From the screen, Casey's familiar growl. " _Dipshit?"_

Sarah could hardly believe her eyes. Her old partner in Burbank—who hadn't exactly been her partner in Burbank. Casey.

Casey himself blinked a couple of times; he could see them on the screen of his field computer but he clearly didn't believe his eyes. He scanned the room, his screen. "Carmichael, Walker, Carina…?" Casey visibly jerked when he saw Ilsa. Sarah glanced at Ilsa. She was staring at the screen, unable to look away.

Casey shook his head, clearing his thoughts, getting control of himself. "Beckman told me I'd be talking to the other members of the team that worked here. That's you folks, I guess." Casey did not seem to know himself whether that was a question.

"Casey, tell us what happened. What did you find?" Chuck.

"The place is a wreck. We found bodies, lots of them. Unfriendlies. Many outside. This was a sledgehammer operation, no finesse, just gung-ho bullshit. Whoever planned it simply didn't give a good goddamn about casualties. They just wanted to smash the objective.

"Inside, more bodies. Unfriendlies. But, also, friendlies." Casey's voice softened a bit. "Near the elevator door we found a pile of unfriendlies—and a woman, Carly Owens. She put up one hell of a fight. Bottlenecked the Ring agents in the elevator. But eventually, they killed her. We found Norman Owens, the husband, I guess, in the hallway that led to the apartment. He had taken several Ring agents with him too. Big guy. He took a lot of bullets before he went down. We found no one else.

"But we did not know how many we were supposed to find. Hell, I still don't understand what was going on down there, to begin with. Why would the Ring pay such a bloody price to take that place?"

The screen split; Beckman entered the discussion. "Casey, I will explain that to you later. Are you sure there were only two friendly casualties?"

"Yes, ma'am. We found an old ventilation shaft in the far end of the place. It was not on the schematics I saw coming in. Long climb, but it gets you to the surface. Looks like someone used it. But couldn't tell how many."

"Thank you, Major." Looking at the group: "I will get back in touch as soon as I have any news."

Casey peered back at them—still clearly shocked to see them. Before the link was broken, he shot a hard glance at Ilsa and, reddened, she looked away. Sarah heard Carina react to Casey's look at Ilsa—a hard to understand sort of sigh-chuckle.

Martin turned around, wiping at his eyes. "Carly and Norman…" But he looked at Chuck and Sarah through the tears. "Frost always has a plan. She always has a way out. She's out there, with Doc, with Ellie, somewhere. She'll stay dark until she is sure she can contact us safely. I just know it. They're alive."

The spell Chuck had been under seemed finally to break. "Then we need to get back to the States. We need to figure out where they are. The Ring will know they've gotten away eventually, if they don't already. And we have a problem. Marcel sent a picture of me with Julie to Sartre and to Ryker…"

Sarah spoke up. "Ryker doesn't matter anymore. He's dead."

Everyone turned to her. Chuck put his hands on her arms, his gaze full of concern. "Are you ok? God, I'm sorry I was so…"

"Chuck, it's ok. I was worried about you, about this…" she swung her arm toward the screen Casey and Beckman had occupied. "I never said anything. Yes, he's dead. I killed him, Chuck. Ilsa, did the team get to _Nuits Blanche_?"

It took Ilsa a moment to answer. She was upset, rattled. "Yes, yes. Ryker is dead. Two women outside. One dead, one seriously wounded. Two men inside, with Ryker. Each shot in the leg." As Ilsa gave the report, as she settled down, her obvious respect for Sarah showed more and more. "And you, Sarah, are here and unhurt. Amazing."

Sarah frowned and moved her sore shoulder. "Bruised, so not quite unhurt. But if Sartre knows we're here, we need to figure out what to do next." She gave Chuck a look; they would talk about all of this later. "Ilsa, thoughts?"

"Sartre will know that Chuck and Carina are not who they said they were. He will wonder why they came to the house. You took nothing, so that will confuse him. But the fact that Chuck was with Julie will direct his attention to the boat and the meeting. He will conclude that the meeting was, to some extent anyway, compromised. Likely, he will get word to the Ring Elders there, warning them. He will also likely realize soon that Ryker is missing…"

Sarah broke in. "Right. I heard Ryker on the phone. He was supposed to move to another Ring safe house, one Sartre arranged. So, yes, Sartre will likely realize that Ryker never made it to the safe house."

"Sartre believes Chuck and Carina—Charles and Cindy—are staying in this suite." Ilsa looked alarmed. If he does anything, he's likely to start here."

Martin went into action. He started immediately dismantling the equipment. "We can leave the monitors and anything that doesn't store data here. But the computers, comms, all that needs to be in the van. Ilsa, can you find a place for all of us on short notice?"

She nodded and stepped away, dialing her phone. Chuck started helping Martin unhook everything. Sarah gathered up loose equipment and put it into the duffel bags they had used to bring it in.

In a few minutes, the suite's equipment had been disassembled and readied for travel. Julie stood in the chaos, confused, watching Chuck. Sarah went to her.

"Julie, I know all this had been crazy. We need to talk to you, and you to us. As soon as we are somewhere safe, ok?"

"Yes, Sarah, that's fine. I understand. I do. We need to be somewhere Sartre can't find us. It'll be very bad for me if he finds me." Julie's anxiety was clear.

Chuck, Martin, and Ilsa picked up the duffle bags and Martin's suitcase, and carried them out. Sarah turned to Carina. "I'll take Julie with me." Carina was staring at the door. "Carina, did you hear me?"

"Ah, yes, Sarah, I did. I just…Ok, I will go to my room and grab my stuff."

"Good, I'll get ours and we will meet you at the safe house." Sarah gave Carina a look. "We need to talk."

Sarah left with Julie. Julie had to almost run to keep up with Sarah's long strides, especially since Julie was pulling her suitcase. They got on the elevator. Relief washed over Sarah, despite the worry about Sartre. Chuck was safe and there was a reason to hope his mom and Dad and Ellie were too.

Sarah felt sad about Carly and Norman. She had looked forward to getting to know them better. She'd deal with that later. Trying to get some control over the welter of emotions, she glanced at Julie.

Julie was staring at the elevator floor. After a moment, she snuck a glance at Sarah out of the corner of her eyes. She saw that Sarah saw it. Julie stood up straighter. The elevator stopped. As they got out, Julie put her hand on Sarah's arm.

"So, you and Chuck?" She sounded resigned to the answer before she heard it. She had seen Sarah tackle Chuck earlier.

Sarah kept her tone even. "Yes. Me and Chuck."

"But, you and Bryce?"

"A long time ago. Done. A long time ago. And, you and Bryce?" Sarah got to the door to the room and key-carded it open.

Julie did not answer right away. "Done, now that he's a prisoner. Never together. Not exactly. It sounds awful, but he was a place-holder. I mean I was genuinely fond of him. But…what happened between us was…well, I don't know _what_ we were—other than not together…."

Sarah was inside the room now, as was Julie. Sarah gathered Chuck's things quickly, and her own, dropping them on the bed. A moment later, their two suitcases were on the bed, open. She put the toiletries in their suitcases. Julie was quiet, standing with her own suitcase. Sarah zipped Chuck's bag. "A place-holder? For…Chuck?"

Julie shrugged but didn't deny it. Sarah zipper her own suitcase. She lifted both off the bed. "Let's go."

She walked out of the room, heading back to the elevator. "And so, what does that mean, Julie?"

"It doesn't mean anything now, Sarah. Seeing Chuck tonight brought all those feelings back, but I know…I've known…that was over. It's been too long. There's been too much that's happened. Chuck used to be… _Chuck_. Now, he's...Bryce."

"Um, no. Believe me! Chuck is not Bryce. He is an agent. But he's also not an agent. He is still Chuck."

"And that's good enough for _you_ , for Sarah Walker? Bryce talked about you," Julie shot a nervous glance at Sarah, "a little, to me. If Chuck is still _Chuck_ , then why would you want him? Bryce, for you, I kind of get."

Sarah got on the elevator and pushed the button for the parking deck. She looked at Julie. Julie wasn't being catty—there was no Carina in her eyes. She just did not understand. Sarah tried to answer the question, although she did not owe Julie an answer.

But she felt like she owed it to Chuck.

"Because he changed me. I don't mean that he created me from whole cloth. No, it's hard to put it into words…I mean he made it possible for me to rediscover the person I am, the person I was meant to be before…my life got in the way, twisted me around." _Damn, did it twist me around!_

'He saw something in me, the _me_ , that was there—but that I couldn't see, or couldn't see clearly. He made me believe she was there, encouraged me to hunt for her. And he helped me hunt for her. He never thought she was just behind me, lost in my past. He thought she was always ahead of me, findable in my future. He kept the faith when I lost it, and he stood by me until I found her, and as I have been _becoming_ her…"

Julie listened, a smile of recognition forming on her face. Maybe touched with envy, but genuine. "When we were in college, when we were dating, people would ask me—'What are _you_ doing with Chuck Carmichael?' Sort of what I now realize I just did to you…Anyway, they would ask. And for a little while I did not know what to say—not because there was no reason, it was just hard to explain it." The elevator stopped at the parking deck. The door opened and they got off. The found the Renault and put their bags in the trunk.

As she started the car, Sarah asked, "So what did you say?"

"I said that Chuck is the most alive person I have known. He doesn't just have a taste for life, he shares it with the people around him. He makes other people more alive." She furrowed her brow.

"He is, as crazy as this sounds, creatively human." She laughed at her own phrase. "Most people can barely manage to be human at all, the best they manage is some boring, rote, paint-by-numbers _faux_ humanity. He's really _human_. He does it like it's fine art. He made me more alive, made me hungry for more life. He made me want to live…better." A thought formed in Julie's eyes. "He sometimes seems so silly, but…But he's a little like Kierkegaard's Knight of Faith in clown shoes!"

Sarah felt her eyes dampen. She looked at Julie and Julie looked at her. Their gazes spoke, each to the other. "Yes, that's good. I don't know Kierkegaard, but I still think I get it. Clown shoes? Do you…? No, you couldn't. Anyway, I get it." She pulled onto the street. She saw the van ahead of her and she caught up, and then fell in behind it.

Julie smiled. "I thought you might. I wish you two the best, Sarah. I guess I get to be the Knight of Resignation." Julie's voice was tinctured with an old sadness but with no bitterness; she turned then and looked out the window on her side.

}o{

During Julie's silence, Sarah noticed a car in the rearview mirror, a particular set of headlights. A blue sedan—at least it looked blue as it passed under streetlights. It was hanging back, but it had so far adjusted to each change in the van's route and Sarah's route.

She wasn't sure yet if the car was tailing her, the van, or both. She'd gotten the safe house address by text as she and Julie left the hotel, so she knew where they were going. Flashing her headlights once, she went on straight at the next intersection while the van turned.

Sarah was not surprised when the sedan followed her. _Julie._ She was their objective—or at least their primary one. Sarah saw an opening in traffic and punched the accelerator hard. Julie's head jerked at the sudden burst of speed.

"Company behind us."

Julie twisted to look back, then slumped in her seat. "Dad. He's everywhere."

Sarah took stock. The sedan was more than a match for the Renault in terms of speed and power. They'd easily stayed the same distance behind her despite her acceleration. Even worse, the driver had done the necessary shifting in traffic deftly—a trained driver. But it was dark, the Renault was brown, and it could fit into spaces the sedan could not. The trick was getting to one. Traffic was beginning to thin. It was late. If the driver was going to try to force her to stop, it would happen soon,

Would the driver do that? If, ultimately anyway, the driver's orders were from Ted Roark, would the driver be allowed to endanger Julie? Sarah whipped the car around a corner—she did not want to leave the narrow the city streets. She had a small advantage there. If necessary, she could ditch the car and they could go on foot. Sarah pulled her gun and put it in her lap.

She assumed Ilsa saw the flash of her lights. Ilsa was a good spy. Assuming Sartre had not had time to scramble more than one car, Chuck, Carina, and Ilsa should be fine. Ilsa knew the city intimately—she'd travel a route now to make sure she was not being followed.

Gritting her teeth, Sarah whipped the car into a narrow alley. The sedan slammed on its brakes, but had to get into reverse to correct for entry into the alley. As she emerged onto the side street, Sarah spun the wheel, bringing the Renault to a 'T' with the alley, the driver's side facing it.

She grabbed her gun from her lap and aimed over the sights, first aiming at the driver's side headlight, then lifting the barrel and firing into the windshield one time. For a second, she thought she had missed, but then the sedan veered into one of the walls of the alleyway, then veered into the other, grinding the passenger side against the wall in a scream of metal and a spray of sparks, then the sedan ground to a stop, the engine stalling.

Sarah did not wait. She slammed the Renault forward, shooting up the street like she'd fired it from her gun. She heard Julie whispered, marveling. " _Shit_. Bryce was right. You are one _scary_ woman."

It didn't strike Sarah as a compliment, although she knew it wasn't an insult.

The emotional weight of the entire evening crashed down on Sarah at last, as the compiled adrenaline spikes of the evening wore off. Bryce's term filled her mind: _the goddamed Terminator_. She'd had to do what she'd done tonight, all night, hadn't she?

Why hadn't she packed a tranq gun? She could've taken Ryker alive, probably. She could've kept from killing one of the women who guarded the door, and maybe she'd killed them both, if the other one didn't make it.

Couldn't she just have fired into the engine block of the car, or just tried to take full advantage of the narrow streets to escape her pursuers?

She felt as she had after her Red Test—even as she had felt after she'd used the sniper rifle near Romney, outside the abandoned mine.

Why did death seem to be her default?

She dealt it automatically, habitually. She hadn't deliberated; she'd terminated. And she wanted to be someone's wife, a mother?

She stopped herself and the avalanche of doubt, holding her breath. The mere fact that she _felt_ the doubt meant she was not who she used to be. In the past, she would have had it but buried it, kept herself from feeling it, run from it to the next mission. She absolutely did not want to do this anymore. But the spy life was not simply going to open its hands and let them go. The spy-gods were greedy, selfish, unappeasable.

"Thank you, Sarah." Julie broke the silence. "I'm sorry if what I said seemed…harsh, or, I don't know, judgy (is that even a word?)," Sarah glanced at her and shrugged. "Well, whether it is or not, sorry. I've lived for years on the edge of this world. Tonight, I've finally entered it." She smiled darkly, to herself. "Although not the way Ted Roark planned…You and Chuck changed my entrance. Maybe you can find me an exit."

And then Sarah finally exhaled, long and slow. Inhaled. "You…and _us_ , Julie. We three all need to find the exit."

"You two want out, together..." Julie immediately caught the implication. "No, Sarah, I really am so sorry. Bryce _wasn't_ right about you. Chuck _is_."

Sarah chuckled a little wetly. "Your tenses are mixed up, Julie, aren't they?" Sarah glanced over at Julie quickly. Julie had paused, reconsidering her words.

"No, Sarah…no. I said exactly what I meant."

* * *

A/N2 Tune in next time for Chapter 32—"Zen Arcade". Did Chuck's family survive? If so, where are they? What more does Julie know? Answers!


	32. Chapter 32: Zen Arcade

**A/N1** Well, here we are at the end of the penultimate mission. By chapter's end, our scene will be shifting and our final mission taking shape: _The Land of Talk Mission_.

Think of this chapter as a scoop of sorbet served between courses to cleanse the palate.

Chapter title here is the title of Hüsker Dü's punk-opera classic—about a boy who leaves an unsatisfying home only to discover the world is far worse.

Thanks for reading and reviewing.

Don't own Chuck.

* * *

 **Turned Tables**

 _The Eiffel Tower High Mission_

* * *

Saturday, February 29, 2008  
Outskirts of Paris, France  
DGSI Safe House  
3:24 am

* * *

CHAPTER 32 Zen Arcade

* * *

Julie was quiet as they finished the drive to the DGSI safe house. Sarah turned in and curled around the long driveway. At its end was a large house and a separate garage. One of the two doors on the garage went up. Inside, Sarah could see Chuck, anxious and worried, standing beside the van. She pulled in and turned off the car. She had felt more and more exhausted as they had gotten nearer the safe house. The night had taken a toll; it would be daybreak soon enough. She was done.

With an act of will, she climbed from the car. Julie got out too. Chuck rushed to Sarah and smothered her in his embrace. "Hey, hey, I am so glad you are here and safe." She clung to him. Exhaustion and emotion might have made her sink if he had not been holding her.

"Chuck," Julie interrupted gently, "go ahead and take her inside. I can grab the bags. We all need some sleep, I think." Chuck led Sarah inside.

The house was large and well-constructed, but its interior was plain—or perhaps it seemed so by contrast with the _Athéné_ and the Park Hyatt. But its plainness soothed Sarah. Opulence was sugar: nice, but not for a steady diet.

Chuck took her down a hallway to a bedroom. He had her sit on the bed and took off her jacket. Kneeling before her, he untied her shoes. She noticed that he had the twist tie on his finger. He loosened the laces of one shoe, and slipped it carefully from her foot. He did the same with the other. He then slowly rolled the sock off each foot. He rubbed one foot and then the other. She felt a dreamy, drowsy arousal. He had her stand up, and he quickly but softly undid the buttons on her blouse.

There was a knock on the door. Chuck cracked it a bit, then opened it. Their suitcases stood in the hallway. Julie must have brought them to the door.

Chuck wheeled them into the room, then put his down and unzipped it. He pulled out a t-shirt. He came back to her and helped her undo and slide down her jeans. While he gathered up her blouse and jeans from where they'd fallen, and folded them, she undid her bra. When he turned back to her, she saw him not-look at her breasts, and she grinned a little at him as he slipped her into his t-shirt.

Pulling back the bedclothes, he helped her into bed, nestled her in the covers. He sat down beside her. Without thinking about it, she reached out and took his hand, rubbing the twist tie on his finger with her thumb.

"You're really mine, Chuck? For keeps?" She could hear the girlish sound of her own voice but didn't regret it.

"Yes, baby, I am yours—for keeps." He leaned over and kissed her lips softly.

"No matter what?" Concern floated in her drooping eyes.

He smiled. "No matter what." Her lips stretched slowly, eventually mirroring his. Sarah drifted off to sleep.

}o{

Chuck walked into the living room of the house. Martin had been busy constructing and reconstructing the set-up from the hotel. They would be in contact with Beckman—with the outside world—soon. Chuck was too anxious to sleep—at least for a little while. He needed to calm down.

He helped Martin for a few minutes, then he went into the kitchen. Carina and Ilsa were talking but they fell silent as he approached. Whatever they had been talking about, it had them both exercised. Each was red-faced. The air in the kitchen was thick. They looked at him, not unkindly, but not quite welcomingly, so he grabbed some water and went back to the living room.

"You really think they got out of Castle, Martin?" Chuck asked. Julie entered the room as he did, coming from the hallway where her bedroom was. She sat down on the couch near Chuck's armchair, clearly interested in Martin's answer.

"Yeah, I really do, Chuck. I can't prove it. I can't even claim that I knew about that ventilation shaft. But it is the kind of thing your mom would know. And here's the thing. I know you're angry with her, and I don't dispute that you are justified to be, but, man, even you, even now, you must admit, that woman is _game_. No one in his or her right mind would want to make a living killing Frost.

"She taught Carly and, well…geez, man, I liked her, Carly, so much…And, Norman, too. He wrestled at Iowa, dude. Never lost a college match. They were devoted to each other…If he knew she was dead, there was no way he would have left Castle alive…" Martin fell silent for a bit and Chuck walked over to him and put his hand on his shoulder. Martin sniffled and wiped his nose on his shirtsleeve. Then he realized Julie was watching him. "Um, sorry, no hanky."

Julie smiled. "No shame in loving your friends, Martin, and no shame in grieving them. They sound great."

"They are…were…Anyway, thanks." He went back to running cables. Chuck went back to his chair, and nodded his own thanks to Julie.

"So, Chuck, I gather your mom is a spy?"

"Yes, forever, it seems."

"And the other people down there, the ones who might have gotten out with her—family, too?" She was catching up, obviously.

"My sister, Ellie, and my dad, Stephen."

"I'm sorry I never met them," Julie offered, "I wish I had. You told me about Ellie at Stanford. She always sounded like someone I would've liked to know."

"You two would have gotten along, I think," Chuck agreed. "I hoped you two would meet. She is an amazing woman."

"But you are angry with her and your mom—and Martin, here?"

"Long story. And Martin and I are working past it. Jury's out on Mom and Ellie. I need them to be alright—just generally, but also so we can try to fix the situation. If something happens to them while we still haven't talked…"

"Well, it's not like you, Chuck, to nurse anger—or, what's the old phrase?, 'let the sun go down on your wrath'." She gave him a searching look.

Chuck did not meet her gaze, but turned his head to watch Martin finish up. "Maybe. But I've changed some—I'm not sure how much. A part of me wants to let this go, to call them, if I could, and tell them I love them, and we'll find our way past it. Another part of me wants to punish them, to return pain for pain. I don't know…I don't know what to do or how to feel…"

"But, Chuck," Martin said, "you…know better…than to take pleasure in resentment, retaliation. That's not you. Even if you think justice is at issue, you don't serve justice that way.

"Was Frost unjust in her treatment of you. Yeah, man, she was. Should she have to suffer for that? I guess. But two things, dude." Martin was gaining in conviction. "One, she already has and will go on suffering for that, and if you don't see it, you're being blind. Two, do you really want to be the one doling out that suffering? Is that a role you want, Chuck? Is that a good role for you?" Martin was red-faced and self-conscious by the time he finished. Chuck stared at him, stunned.

"Where did that come from?" Chuck was shaking his head.

"I dunno. I've just been torn up about this. You guys are sort of my family too, and I want us all to just get along…"

"Martin," Julie added, "that was beautiful, deep, even." She gave him a wide, respectful smile. Martin's red face reddened more.

"Well, all I know is that I feel the way I feel." Chuck's tone was defensive. "I can't make myself not feel this way."

"No," Martin agreed, "not just sitting here, not by replaying it in your head. But if you got up, tried to interact with them again, talked to them, your feelings might change over time. Like with me…" He glanced away, worried about Chuck's reaction.

"Maybe so, Martin. We'll see. Right now, I just want to know they are safe." He stared down at his hands. He'd been wringing them in his lap without realizing it.

}o{

Sarah woke up from a dream of headlights and gunshots.

She realized to her relief that she was in bed with Chuck, wrapped around him and him around her, a snake couple. She shook her head gently, clearing it. Then she realized that she had awakened because of a soft knock on the door. "Yes?" She felt Chuck stir.

The door opened, and Carina peeked her head in. Seeing them, she put on a wolfish smile. "Room for a third?"

Sarah grabbed her pillow and threw it at the ducking redhead. "Carina, for all your talk, you know you can't count past one..."

"Breakfast, Blondie. We can talk about my math skills later. You seem to be mastering the two-backed beast..." She shut the door.

Chuck opened one eye. "Is it gone?"

Sarah laughed softly. "Yes, Madam Bovary has retreated."

"Just exactly how much... _French_...do you know, Mrs. Walker?" Chuck asked, adding the other eye to his set of open eyes. Both eyes were curious.

"Well," Sarah said, leaning in and pressing her lips teasingly against his, "let's just say that my tongue is fully adequate to all the twists and turns of the...language."

Chuck closed his eyes and smiled. With his eyes still closed, he asked: "You mean like 'Hickory Dickory Dock'? Isn't that a homophone of a sentence in French? ' _Equi_ _rit_ _des_ _curés_ _d'Oc_?'" Chuck's French struggled.

Sarah gave him a grin, confined to one corner of her mouth. "If we had more time, we'd work on those first two words—in the English version."

Amused, she watched Chuck work it out, and knew he had when his face lit up. She got up at just that moment.

"Really, after you made me chase that phrase? _All work_ _and no play_ _makes_ _Chuck a dull boy_."

Sarah smirked as she pulled on a pair of jeans. "No, early morning Stephen King references make Chuck a dull boy."

She buttoned her jeans and grabbed a sweatshirt from her suitcase, put it on. She rolled her eyes at Chuck as she left, then she stuck her head back in the room and winked at him.

}o{

Chuck dozed for a few minutes after Sarah left the room. He could smell coffee and the blessed scent would not allow him quite to quit consciousness. He got up and dressed, brushed his teeth and fought a battle with his curls that ended as usual—Curls 1, Chuck 0.

He heard a series of yells from the other part of the house, and he rushed out to see what was going on. Martin saw Chuck coming from the hallway and ran to him, holding out the phone. "Chuck, it's your mom! It's on speaker..."

"Mom?"

"Chuck." Clipped, efficient, barely discernible emotion. "Yes, it's me. I'm with Ellie and your Dad. I can't talk but for a moment. We are alive and well. Your father is struggling—but physically, he's ok. I will arrange for a secure line and get back to you within the next hour or two."

"Alright. We contacted Beckman, Mom."

"That's good. She's sort of a friend. Trust her, but verify. Does she know about Stephen?" Chuck looked at Martin, who shook his head. "No, maybe she's worked it out, but Martin—he talked to her-did not tell her."

"Good, That's good. More soon. Love you, Chuck." Her voice slid to a whisper, and its edges rounded as she ended the call.

Chuck turned to Martin. "Can you contact Beckman for me?" He nodded firmly. "Do. We need a flight out of here." Martin sat down and went to work.

Ilsa stepped toward Chuck. "Chuck, I have been cleared by DGSE to go to the US with you. A dragnet is now out across Europe for the Ring Elders who were aboard _Paquebot_. They're running, most of them, but they won't escape. I would like to follow this to its conclusion." She seemed about to add something but then she stopped herself.

"As long as Beckman can get you a seat, I'd love to have you. I have a pretty good idea where Mom is heading, and roughly what she is planning. We need all the help we can get.." He turned and looked for Julie, but she was still asleep. "Mom's going after Ted Roark. We need to get there as soon as we can."

}o{

As they waited to hear from Frost, and to see if Beckman could get them out of Paris and to the US, if not to Burbank, Sarah pulled Chuck by his hand back down the hallway to their bedroom. When they got inside, she closed the door and locked it.

"Chuck, I killed Ryker last night. I shot him before he could draw his gun. I killed one of the women guarding the safehouse. I haven't heard—I might have killed the other. I wounded two other men. I at least wounded the driver of the sedan chasing Julie and me before we got here. Even for me," her voice broke, "that's a steep body count for one night.

"I can do...these things, and I do, and I need you to know it, to look at me and make me sure that you know it. I couldn't bear for you to be lying to yourself about who I have been, and who I still can be. I am...different...now, Chuck, different than I used to be. But I can't become the person I want to be all at once, and when I am in these situations—like last night—I just...respond to stimuli, I react, and my reactions are of a certain kind..." Tears ran down her cheeks, but she made no move to stop them or to wipe them away. Chuck leaned down and kissed her cheek, the salt of her tears on his lips.

"Sarah, last night I hit an unarmed man in the head with the butt of his pistol. I could have killed him, caused him permanent damage. I guess I didn't do either, but I could have.

"We're going to have to fight and claw our way out of the spy life. I thought I could just walk away from it, but that was an illusion; I had no idea my entire life has been a spy life. No 'Dear Langston Graham'-letter would've been my ticket out. Even if I'd resigned, I'd have been in the toils of the life still. I'd have been pulled back in somehow.

"I thought I was going to be the one to lead you out—and maybe I did, sort of, there for a while—but now I am going to have to follow you. I'll be Eurydice; you be Orpheus. Let's do as little harm as we can, but let's face it, the motto of the spy life is that line from a Doors song, ironically: _No one here gets out alive_. But we will, Sarah, together, and with some help from our friends in there, and maybe my family too, we can get out alive."

Sarah reached up and threaded her fingers together behind Chuck's neck. She pulled his lips to hers. "Take me to bed, Mr. Walker, and make me feel alive—make me feel loved."

Chuck pulled back just a bit. "But, ah, Mrs. Walker, there's a house full of people, almost all awake now, and I know it..."

"Shut up and make love to me, Chuck. I'm a trained assassin—I know how to do things silently."

"Right, right, Sarah. But I'm not so good at that."

"Don't worry. We'll find...something...to muffle your cries." Sarah pulled off her sweatshirt and pushed him down on the bed.

}o{

About ninety minutes later, Chuck was sitting at the kitchen table with Sarah, drinking coffee. She had not put on any shoes, and she had her bare feet in his lap, her long, jean-clad legs stretched out beneath the table from her side to his. Chuck and Sarah were both pink-cheeked and dewy.

Carina had been in the kitchen when they came in, and she shook her head at the two of them, observing them across the lip of her coffee cup. "Eiffel Tower high, again, you two?" She sashayed out of the kitchen without waiting for a reaction.

Martin called Chuck's name. "It's Frost. She's got a video uplink, a secure line!" They put down their coffees and hurried to the living room.

On the screen were Frost and Ellie. Stephen was not pictured. Ellie had a bandage on her hand. Frost had her arm in a sling. They were both clearly exhausted. It looked like they were in a cheap motel.

"Chuck, Sarah, Martin...everyone. Hello. We are in Ohio. In a strange little river town, a village, I guess, Middleport. We are heading to Columbus—where I am going to board a jet that will take me to Bob Hope Airport in Burbank. I have talked to Beckman. She will be talking to you in a few minutes. She has arranged flights to get you here."

"Mom," Chuck tried to interject, but Frost went on.

"I will set up a temporary base for us somewhere near Burbank. We need to move quickly. Roark's timetable is clearly ahead of Stephen's most generous estimate."

"Mom," Chuck broke in, more firmly, "we have Julie Roark here with us." Julie was up, standing and holding a cup of coffee.

For once, Frost was surprised. She quit talking and blinked. Then she started again. "Does Miss Roark understand who her father is and why he must be stopped?"

"I do," Julie answered, matter-of-factly. "I do better than anyone. Dad's Ring technology is still flawed, but an advanced form of it is in some sense operational. That it is operational has been a huge secret.

"It will eventually render psychotic or kill anyone who has it installed, but it can be installed, and for a while, the person will not only have recall of all of the data stored on the implant (and be able to store new data) but will be able to control his or her vital functions—speeding up heart rate, increasing adrenaline flow, slowing breathing, and so on.

"For example, for a brief period, maxing out adrenaline, an agent with the implant becomes much stronger than normal and much faster. It does not confer new skills, but it can make existing skills even more expert, deadly. It doesn't make the agent a _superhero_ or anything—no leaping tall buildings in a single bound—but it turns up the volume, for lack of a better phrase.

"The problem is that the more the implant is used, the greater the physical and psychological strain the implantee is under. They finally snap. Some—those who don't make much use of it—last a month, maybe. But those who use it much only last a couple of weeks. They eventually go out-of-control. The end is grisly.

"Dad made me read the scientists' reports. And, of course, he's keeping the side-effects secret, not telling his volunteers. We need to save those people—maybe they're Ring agents, but they don't deserve what Dad has planned for them. I wanted to save them, I think Dad knew that, and that's one reason he wanted me in Europe.

"He has his Legion, as he calls them, of volunteers, and he is planning to implant their technology right away. It was supposed to begin, he said, once the thorn in his side was taken care of. I'm guessing that was...Castle."

Frost slumped visibly. "Damn it. He's definitely ahead of where we thought he was. Stephen was always amazing, but never infallible. We have to hurry. Beckman's sending a combat team. I need you here right away."

"Mom," Chuck broke in once more, "where's Dad? _How_ 's Dad?"

Frost glanced at Ellie and Ellie answered. "Physically, he's ok, Chuck. Better, actually, than we are, although neither of us is seriously injured. But taking Dad from that familiar, controlled environment with no chance to drug him or somehow cushion the blow-it took a psychological toll.

"I had to use the experimental drug I mentioned to you. He's ok—stable. He's been unconscious since we gave him the serum, not long after we got out and got away. But his vitals have been fine. We are going to take him to The Ohio State Brain and Spine Hospital. Beckman's already set it up. I have a couple of friends, neurosurgeons, there. We will have to read one or both in, so that Dad can get the care he needs. I will need help. I will stay there; Mom will go on to Burbank."

Chuck was thinking, rubbing his chin. He had slipped his twist-tie engagement ring on before they left the bedroom. Ellie noticed it. Barely raising one eyebrow, she shifted her gaze to Sarah. Sarah sent her a small smile in return.

"Alright. We will be on our way as soon as we can. Take care of Dad—and of yourselves. Don't do anything, _Mother_ , until we get there."

Frost looked at Chuck, first with a frown, then a smile. "I won't, _son_. Frost out."

}o{

Beckman had arranged a flight—or, rather, flights.

They would fly from Paris to Atlanta, then from Atlanta to Burbank. Two small, private jets would be used—large enough for the entire group: Chuck, Sarah, Carina, Martin, Ilsa and Julie. The first flight would not be until the early evening, so folks took advantage of a few hours of downtime, napping, chatting, video-gaming.

Sarah went hunting for Carina and found her sitting outside on the patio, enjoying the cool sunshine of the French afternoon. When Sarah approached, Carina had a faraway, preoccupied look on her face.

"Carina?" Carina jumped a bit in her chair. "Sorry, didn't mean to interrupt a daydream." Carina sent Sarah a friendly but still somehow withering look.

"Say, I've been wanting to ask you something. Last night, when Chuck and Martin and Ilsa left the suite, you were staring hard. What's going on there?"

Carina looked trapped, frightened. "Um, well, I'd just...I'd seen...I'd watched..." She threw up her hands in a half-serious fit of frustration. "I don't know..."

Sarah sat down in the empty chair beside Carina. "You don't have to explain."

"I'm not sure I can. It doesn't make any sense really. But last night, when I saw him go into action, all he did to try to save Chuck's family in Castle. I mean he couldn't do it. But the focus, the expertise, the invention, the speed..."

Sarah sat up, confused. "I was talking about you and Ilsa."

Carina's expression grew horrified. "Oh. Oh, that. Well..."

"No," Sarah jumped in, barely able to stifle a grin, "tell me more about watching...Martin."

Carina huffed. At first, it seemed she wasn't going to say anything, and Sarah was about to give up and ask about Ilsa. But then Carina decided to speak. "That double-date in Burbank. I wasn't interested in him, God knows, but something about the whole situation—you and Chuck, me and Martin, the three of us there being the Snoresvillage People, it didn't seem so...sleepy, so bad. I can't say I want what you want, Sarah. But I don't know if I want what I used to want." She paused for a long time, feeling her way ahead, to what she wanted to say next.

"I either need to move up in the DEA, and get out of field work, or I need to move on, find something else to do. This 'Live hard, die young, leave a beautiful corpse' jingle sounded pretty good to me when I started—but that's because I was so young. I felt invulnerable. I didn't take dying seriously. I do now.

"Back a couple of months ago, a bust in Mexico City went sour. My target caught me at the building exit and he had me dead to rights. I had my gun, but I was out of ammo. He still had his, loaded. He lifted it, aimed it at me, and pulled the trigger. It misfired. I escaped.

"I should be dead. Dumb luck, not my skill, not my looks, saved me. And I knew that night, as I fought the shakes, that I am _not_ invulnerable. I've been trying not to think about it—you know me, not thinking about things is my specialty." Sarah nodded and pointed to herself in solidarity. Carina chuckled unhappily. "Yeah, I guess we helped each other with the not-thinking thing; I certainly helped you with it."

Sarah lifted her shoulders an inch. "I was willing, Carina, I went along...It's hard to be friends in the spy life, like it's hard to be in love in the spy life. The spy life has no room in it for love, romantic, friendly—or familial. Look at how twisty things between us have been, look at how impossible it has been for Chuck and me, look at Chuck and his mom and dad and sister...even Julie and Ted Roark. 'Spies don't love'-any kind of love. The spy gods hate love."

Carina gave Sarah a look. " _The spy gods_?"

Sarah nodded. "Chuck..."

"I should have known it would be one of Chuckle's conceits."

"So, tell me more about watching _Martin_." Sarah asked a second time, smirked at Carina.

Carina leaned closer to Sarah and dropped her voice. "If you repeat this, I will make your life a living hell, Sarah Walker. Understood?" Sarah nodded once, quickly. "Well, you know how much I love...competence...And the little man was competent, amazing really. And his hands, his fingers, so nimble, so quick..."

"Ok, ok, I don't need to hear any more. I think I have the picture. And he is competent. Frost clearly thinks he's one of the best, if not the best, analyst the CIA has. For what it's worth, he's clearly into you, and has been since Burbank."

Carina shook her head in disbelief at Sarah's assurance. "Of course, he is into me, Sarah. He's a man; he has zero chance. But I don't know. I've...dampened...before. It probably doesn't mean anything—except that it's been a while." Carina caught herself, what she'd said—then glanced around the yard. She added nothing more.

Sarah smirked at her again. "You know, I told you the other day I didn't need to stay and see how it ended. That's because I knew how it would. I knew you wouldn't. For all your talk of exotic dishes and buffets, you are a meat and potatoes girl, Carina Miller. Lots of meat and potatoes, but still..."

Carina stretched her eyes wide open. "Did you really just say 'a meat and potatoes girl'? Sarah, I am shocked, _shocked_ , I tell you. What has Chuck done to you?"

Sarah stretched slow, cat-like, in the sun. Smiling: "Mmmm...what hasn't he done to me?"

Carina eagerly waited for more, but Sarah closed her eyes and bathed silently in the sunshine. She had nothing more to share. Sarah heard Carina huff in frustration: evidently, it had been a while.

* * *

 **A/N2** And so the curtain falls on the City of Lights. I hope you enjoyed it. I did. Leave me a review and let me know what you make of the story so far, please.

I had an awkward number of words ahead of me as I finished this mission—after Chapter 30. Too many for one chapter, nearly too few for two, but I decided to do it as two. That gave this chapter an interludial feel, and since there will be no formal interlude between this mission and the next, _The Land of Talk Mission,_ I figured everyone could use a chance to regroup for the final sprint.

Tune in next time for Chuck and Sarah and Frost, strange tidings from Columbus, Ilsa, Casey, and more on Ted Roark. Burbank! Chapter 33 "Color Me Badd" (misspelling intended).

 _Land of Talk_ , by the way, is another favorite musician. I'll be using her song titles as chapter titles in the next mission. But 'land of talk' is also a phrase I have been using since back in _Cables_ to mock my own propensity toward dialogue. I love talk, and like little more than writing dialogue. (Not claiming to be good at it, just to like it.) One of my heroes, Stephen MacKenna, the great Irish writer and translator of Plotinus' _Enneads_ (believe it or not, the topic of my dissertation), once said of himself that his fondest ambition was to be the greatest talker—of both sense and nonsense—that he knew. That's an ambition I like. And my liking for it bleeds over into my stories.


	33. Chapter 33: Color Me Badd

**A/N1** Greetings from Iowa City. I am here for my son's graduation. That's one reason why I am running behind my normal schedule.

* * *

Back when I gave this its subtitle, _The Long Story_ , I did it not do it because I expected to write 200K words (I didn't) but because I wanted to underscore its distance from the _short_ one-shot that led to it.

If I were to re-subtitle it, I would call it _Promise and Compromise_ , I think. That reveals its Austenian ambitions (most of them sadly but, unsurprisingly, unrealized—I can't write well enough) and indicates what I am chasing in the story. That subtitle also highlights the accident of pronunciation that hides the word 'promise' in 'compromise'. Oh, well, I will reserve that title and come back to it perhaps if I return with another story someday.

* * *

We end at our start, Burbank: "In my beginning is my end," as Eliot wrote in _East Coker._

(Damn, that poem! Right?)

This mission will take some time to get started, even though it will take place in a short time span. We have a lot of characters now, and things to settle between and among them, not to mention settling with Roark and the Ring. This first chapter resets things so that we can go on.

Thanks for reading and reviewing. Means a lot to me as I near the moment when I shuffle off this inky coil, at least for a while.

Don't own Chuck.

* * *

Important— **a warning**. The first scene here is dark. It is not in any way explicit, but a character tells of the story of a very bad day. The term 'rape' gets used. If that sort of thing is hard for you to read—it was hard for me to write, I know—you can skip it and not miss too much.

* * *

 **Turned Tables**

 _The Land of Talk Mission_

* * *

Saturday, February 29th  
Airborne, Between Paris and Atlanta

* * *

CHAPTER 33 Color Me Badd

* * *

Beckman had arranged a private jet to fly them to the US. They'd changed from the one they were on to another at an airfield near Atlanta, and this one would take them to an airfield near Burbank. They expected to talk with Frost soon but had not heard from her yet.

Sarah was curious what Frost was planning.

Chuck was napping in his chair. Sarah got up to stretch. Ilsa was seated by herself, staring morosely out the window at the fading blue in the air. Sarah took the empty seat beside her.

"I know we don't know each other well, Ilsa. But I know something is up with you, something Carina seems to know about, and something that somehow involves Casey?"

Ilsa bit her lip. Hope and misery fought to possess her features. She looked for a moment like she might refuse to answer—but then she blew out a long breath.

"Has Carina told you that she and I have met before? It was not long after the team you and she were on dissolved." Sarah nodded for Ilsa to continue. "It was a sting operation—an arms dealer who dabbled in drugs on the side.

"One night we were stuck in our hotel. Nothing was happening with the mission and the weather was awful, freezing and miserable, grey sleet—we were in Moscow—and so we spent the evening in Carina's room. With several bottles of vodka. We began to talk of the men we have known, and she mentioned a man, an agent, she knew briefly in Prague. She had been impressed by him, although nothing lasting developed between them. At one point, she described the man and I recognized him—John Casey. But I did not know him by that name.

"When I knew him, I was in deep cover. As was he, it turns out. He only knew me as the woman I was pretending to be. He was not my target, not my mark, not my asset. He was not involved in my mission and I was not involved in his. We just happened to meet and to…well, we became involved with _each other_. Circumstances of my mission required me to fake my death—but John did not know that it was a fake until he saw me earlier. We had real feelings for each other although we were both pretending to be someone else. At least, I believe we did…" She trailed off, clearly reliving some scene of her past.

"I know something about real feelings under covers, Ilsa," Sarah offered, looking significantly toward Chuck. "Sometimes it works out; sometimes the lies are forgiven, the truth discovered. Sometimes agents turn into real people."

"So, I have seen, and it has made me hope. I still care for John. But…there is another problem. And I fear it cannot be overcome," Ilsa eyes filled with tears.

Sarah reached out to her, put her hand gently on Ilsa's arm. "It's ok."

"Thank you, Sarah," Ilsa smiled tightly. "A little more than a year ago, I was again under deep cover. I will spare you—and myself—most of the details. The assignment was infiltration and seduction. I made a series of errors, and found myself in a position where I would fail in my mission—to recover USSR-remaindered warheads—or I would have to sleep with my mark.

"I should have abandoned the mission. If I had known what it would cost me, I would have abandoned it. But I thought I could do it and cope with it. You know the story—a 'sacrifice' for the Greater Good. (Funny how it is almost always men telling that story but rarely facing that 'sacrifice'!). I did it. I have never felt so…filthy. Horrible. Inhuman. It was as though…as though... I had somehow consented to my own…rape. I know that's an awful term," she added in a rush, "I know that what I say may not seem coherent, but it felt like I was being forced to have sex at gunpoint, except I was the one holding the gun, the gun was my fear of failing the mission." Ilsa stalled, her voice heavy with grief, her eyes searching Sarah's for understanding. Sarah's breath caught. She squeezed Ilsa's arm.

"I've never had to do that, Ilsa, but I can imagine..." Sarah felt her words completely inadequate to Ilsa's pain.

After swallowing hard, Ilsa went on. "It stained me. Hurt me very deeply." She fought to go on.

"Until Frost called and asked me to check on the clown school, I have been behind a desk. I have only recently begun to feel better, like myself…Seeing Casey surprised me in many ways. But most important, it revealed to me that I still had feelings I believed I could no longer feel…I had thought my days of feeling as I had before, as the _woman_ I was, were ended…

"After I did…what I did, I tried and tried to tell myself the story about the Greater Good—but it breaks down. If the Greater Good story is true, and if what I did was for the greater good, then I was morally required to do it. But then, it shouldn't have even been thought of as a 'sacrifice', really, it was the right thing to do, the thing I ought to have done.

"Don't misunderstand me. I don't mean that doing the right thing is never hard or never goes against a person's inclinations. But I don't care what anyone says, I lived that night…that _nightmare_. It was not the right thing to do, the thing I _ought_ to have done—even though the weapons were found and secured, the terrorists kept from them." She paused in tearful silence.

When she continued, she was vehement. "No one, no one should be required to violate herself, her sense of what is right, to do what is supposedly right.

"I have told Carina about this, and I have told her that if Casey does have feelings for me still, as I hope, then I must tell him about it. She disagrees. She says that I do not have to tell him, that if I am past it, then I should leave it in the past. We have argued about it."

Sarah kept her hand on Ilsa's arm. "If Casey does still care for you, do you think you can really be past it if you _don't_ tell Casey about it?"

Ilsa sat for a moment, then shook her head. "Isn't that your answer?" Ilsa sat for a moment again, then nodded. Each woman sat with the other but with her own thoughts.

A memory struck Sarah, and she straightened in her seat, blurted it out: "Wait, when Carina first saw you in Paris, in the suite, she asked ' _How's tricks_?' My God, I am going to…"

"No, no, Sarah…That was an old joke between us from before, not funny, perhaps, but one of those in-jokes between people who have spent idle time together. A too-much-vodka joke. No, she knew nothing of my…sorrow. Even Carina would not be so wantonly cruel. I told her while we were in Paris; she did not know before Paris."

Sitting back, Sarah calmed down. "Ok, good, I would hate to think she could carry anything that far."

"Do you think Casey will forgive me, Sarah?"

"It will be hard for him to hear this, Ilsa. But I don't know that Casey will believe it is his place to _forgive_ you. He will hope you can forgive yourself, I think." Ilsa closed her eyes and that, and nodded sadly.

Sarah sat with Ilsa for a while—until Ilsa feel asleep.

Sarah walked back to her seat by Chuck. He was awake. She sat down, then leaned over and hugged him as hard as she could. Smiling, and a little breathless, he asked: "What was that for?"

"Just because…" Sarah answered, leaning her head on his shoulder.

}o{

Frost contacted them during the flight from Atlanta.

"I am in Burbank. Cars will meet you at the airfield. John Casey and his hand-picked team will be there to drive you.

"I have secured the two apartments the CIA used when Team Bartowski was in Burbank. The CIA kept them and acquired another in the complex. I will share one with Chuck and Sarah." Chuck started to protest but Frost went on without allowing it. "Carina and Ilsa will share one. Julie and Martin will share the third.

"Casey and his team will bunk at nearby safehouse. Our mission command center, the place where our equipment will be stored, will be the abandoned Buy More building. No one had any interest in turning it into a real store, evidently, and it likely couldn't have competed with Large Mart anyway. So, we have it.

"Our cover is simple—we are a group of Buy More employees (in case anyone happens to be recognized) from Burbank and other locations who have been hired to refit the store to be sold to Walmart. Roark and the Ring will never suspect we would re-use the building. We shouldn't need it for long, at any rate."

Chuck and Sarah and Martin all looked at each other—none had ever expected to be back in the Buy More again. The prospect was strange, almost unearthly—greenish. Martin spoke up. "Um, Frost, aren't Walmart and Large Mart like…the same? Why would they be beside each other?"

Frost narrowed her eyes. "Aren't Lowes and Home Depot the same, Martin? But they are across the street from each other basically everywhere. There are deep mysteries in American retail—ours is not to try to understand them."

Chuck thought he almost saw his mom smile. What she said might even have been a joke. That was weirder than going back to the Buy More.

"Julie," Frost continued, "I have been studying plans and aerials of the RI facility near Burbank. Do you know if that is where your father is conducting his Intersect program?"

"Yes, I was taken there once. He has, over many years, constructed an elaborate _base_ , I guess, beneath the RI facility. I was taken there once, just a few days before he put me on an RI jet with Ryker—heading to Paris. You should know that he has a large RI security force, many of whom are Ring, and almost all of whom are loyal to Dad. They are well-trained and well-equipped. There aren't many on duty at any given time, normally, but with me missing and Ring Elders being captured across Europe, I'd say you have zero chance of finding any skeleton shifts. Just the opposite.

"Even worse, I fear he will already have a few Ring tech Intersects down there. But I don't think he has more than a few, yet. The implants are expensive, really expensive. It takes time to make them—these, he doesn't have made overseas by cheap labor like everything else—and it takes time and a trained medical staff to perform the implant. He was supposed to have enough tech ready soon, probably, by now he already does. He was waiting on it and 'volunteers'. He told me he thought he could implant eight to ten people in a day, if the medical staff did nothing else.

Oh! One more thing—and it is important, or it might be. New implantees usually go through a couple of days of disorientation and sickness, adjusting. It's not exactly a plug-n-play tech."

"Alright, Julie, thanks. If you think of anything else, tell Chuck or Sarah, please. I know this must be hard for you. These family splits are…" Frost stopped herself. She cleared her throat. "Anything else, anyone?" No one spoke. "Frost out."

}o{

They would be on the ground soon. Everyone was tired, stale—too long on a plane, hours and hours. Chuck looked over at Sarah. She was staring at the window, the closed window.

"Sarah" Chuck whispered her name. She turned to him and smiled, the smile weary at the edges. "What you were thinking about?"

"About my flight here the first time. All the things I believed that weren't true. I believed I was flying in to handle an asset, a loser who worked at a big box store and hadn't really dated since college." She grinned. "I thought the assignment would be a piece of cake. I even used those words." Chuck laughed, but said nothing. "I can't believe I am flying back to Burbank, engaged to that loser," she shot him a teasing glance, "and working to find a new life for him and for me."

She paused, taking stock. "I can still do the things that woman could do, we know that, the skill set, the habits, there're still there, but I feel so different now Chuck. That's really what I was thinking about. How different I feel, how different the world feels to me now…The world used to seem alien, hostile, cold—gray on gray, endlessly, horizon to horizon. Abysmal."

Chuck met and held her gaze. "And now?"

"Well, I have been a CIA agent for a decade, a trained assassin, so it's not like I rate it all daisies, and rainbows, and frolicking ponies," Chuck laughed again, and Sarah grinned again—but then she became serious, and he saw her glance toward Ilsa, "It can be horrific." She visibly shuddered. After a pensive moment, she resumed.

"But I also know it is a place you can live, a place where, with work and good luck, it is possible to be happy. The world's a mystery, Chuck, life in it's a mystery—not a problem to be solved, certainly not a mission to be completed. It's something else, something completely its own. That's what I was thinking about…"

"Wow, that's, um, pretty articulate—pretty fancy thinking." He bumped her shoulder with his own, grinning fondly, touched by what she had said. "If you hadn't stopped, I was about to tell you to shut up and kiss me."

She snorted and punched his shoulder, hard.

"Ouch!"

"That's my line, sweetie. _Dibs_. I need it so much more often than you do."

Chuck shrugged his agreement. "Yeah, yeah, you do."

His expression shifted to puzzlement and his voice became even softer. "Sarah, with Ryker…gone, isn't the threat against your mom and Molly gone too? I've been so caught up in the Ring and all this stuff…my family…I forgot to ask, even though I wondered as soon as you told ud that Ryker was dead. I'm sorry."

"Don't be, Chuck, it's been a crazy couple of days." She looked away, considering the question. "Yes, the threat is likely gone. But I am going to wait until we finish this before I remove the safeguards I put in place. Ryker was clearly more to Roark than a mere candidate for the Ring. Roark, Ryker, Graham. That Unholy Trinity remains to be fully explained. So, until Roark has been taken care of, I worry that Ryker might have told him something, that he might try to use Mom or Molly against us, threaten them."

Chuck nodded. "I'm excited to meet your mom—and your little sister. When the day comes…"

"I'm looking forward to that so much," Sarah beamed enthusiastically.

"When do we tell my Mom—about us?" He held up his left hand, wiggling his twist-tied ring finger.

She reached for his hand, grasping it and rubbing his palm with her thumb. "That's up to you. Whenever you feel ready, Mr. Walker."

He mouthed 'Thanks', then, as he looked around the plane, his gaze settled on Carina. "You think she'd finally accepted us—or, if 'accept' is too much, adjusted to us?"

"Adjusted, maybe, but more than that? I can't say. We are in foreign terrain here. Carina's heart's sort of in the right place, but her head's on backward a lot of the time. It takes her time to get…oriented. She'll leave us alone now, no more awkward seduction strategies. That doesn't mean we won't have to endure continuing verbal jabs. But she's done trying 'to talk us down'." Sarah finished with a fond and wary glance at Carina.

"Good," Chuck said, less a word than a relieved sigh. "The woman is a terror. Was she like this in the CAT days?"

"Worse."

"I'm not sure even my comic book-fortified, popular culture-augmented imagination is equal to imagining her _worse_." He shook his head. "How did you survive her?"

"In pieces. The CAT squad had a weird dynamic. I suppose I was the leader. Our superiors, Graham, treated me that way. Or at least I was the _in-mission_ leader. During downtime, Carina took over. We didn't have much downtime, really, and I rarely thought it made sense, given the mission, to allow Carina to turn downtime into Girls Night Out. She didn't brook disagreement well.

"Planning, preparation, forethought—not Carina's favorite things. Winging it, even where lives were at stake, that was her thing. I was always telling her to _focus_."

"I can't imagine it…" Chuck said, feigning shock.

Sarah slapped his arm. "I didn't say it to you that often did I, Chuck?"

"After Burbank, and by the time we'd been in Batumi a day or so, I thought you'd legally changed my name to 'Focus Chuck'. You know, like, say, 'This is Sally Jane Smith—and this is Focus Chuck Carmichael'."

"Really? I was that bad?" she became genuinely self-conscious.

"Sarah, you threatened to shoot me at one point," he put on a look of exaggerated hurt, "with a sniper's rifle, yet, and in a tiny room…"

She put her hand to her forehead. "God! I did, didn't I? I must have terrified you."

"I won't say I wasn't scared—but I will say I was a smidgen aroused. In hindsight." His ears pinked a bit.

She rolled her eyes. "Do you mean you find it arousing to have someone threaten to shoot you?"

"Not exactly what I mean. I mean I find it arousing to have you threaten to shoot me. I'm a one-assassin man."

"Chuck…"

"Yeah?"

"Shut up and kiss me."

}o{

They landed as Los Angeles Air Force base. When they got off the plane, John Casey met them, his team of four and himself all in plain clothes. Sarah was surprised at how glad to see him she was.

He looked at the group of them, this time in no visible way singling out Ilsa, and then he stepped to Chuck, holding out his hand. "Carmichael, never imagined I'd work with you again, especially not here, and with your mother running the show. Nothing with you ever works out quite normally does it? You are the damnedest spy I have ever known…"

Chuck grinned and bypassed Casey's hand, pulling the reluctant big man into a hug. His team passed looks among themselves, readying for violence. But Casey ended up leaning into the hug and pounding, rather hard, on Chuck's back, although he said nothing.

Sarah shook his hand. He smiled slightly. "I see you have managed to keep the moron alive." He added, very quietly, "But then, you are one helluva partner." Sarah grinned at him.

Martin stepped up and before Casey could speak, chirped, "And I am the dipshit. Just thought I'd save you the time."

Carina waved at Casey, and then pointedly gazed from him to Ilsa, but Casey refused to follow her gaze. He'd reacted before: he'd prepared to see her this time, Sarah thought to herself.

"Saddle up."

"Let's roll. Frost is eager to see you." Casey turned and headed to first of the three SUVs parked in a line. Chuck and Sarah joined him, as did Carina. Ilsa had hung back and gotten in the second. Martin joined her, helping Julie in too. One of Casey's team took the wheel. The other three members of his team got in the final SUV after loading it with the luggage.

The drive took about a little over an hour. The afternoon shadows of Burbank had grown long by the time they got to a non-descript parking garage. They parked the SUVs and transferred into cars they would be using while on the mission—three late model Honda accords, four door sedans—a white, a silver and a black one. Sarah and Chuck took the first, Martin and Carina the second, and that left Ilsa and Casey to take the last. The luggage got divvied up among the cars. The other members of Casey's team took one of the SUVs and went on to their safehouse.

}o{

As he pulled Sarah pulled into the apartment complex, she was surprised to see Frost standing anxiously just outside the door of the apartment. (The same one Chuck had shared with Ellie and Devon.). It was a strange sight—both because it was behavior she had not expected from Frost, and because it was so odd to be back here, at an apartment that had been the source of both so much happiness and so much frustration during the months of Team Bartowski.

The apartment complex looked the same. Sarah did not know quite why that surprised her, but it did. Maybe it was because she felt so different arriving this time than any time before. She was with Chuck now. Her worries about being compromised or re-assigned were out of play. Chuck Carmichael—not Chuck Bartowski, but not not-Chuck Bartowski—was her fiancé. The had not set a date, their engagement was not yet public knowledge, but Sarah was determined to marry Chuck as soon as they escaped from spying. Soon, she hoped, please, soon.

The fountain gurgled quietly. No one else seemed to be outside. Frost did not wave. She did not even smile. But her posture gave her away—she was not posed, and her posture spoke volumes about the depth of her anxiety. She was no doubt anxious about their safe arrival, but she was no doubt anxious too about this reunion with her son.

Sarah could feel Chuck delaying, fiddling with the luggage, talking to Casey. But Casey rounded up Carina and Martin and Julie and led them to the apartment he had occupied before. He was going to give Frost and Chuck and Sarah some time. The big man had picked up on some little things.

Sarah did not press Chuck. Taking her bag from him, she pulled it behind her to Frost. Frost smiled then at Sarah, hugging her when she got close. The hug was intense, and Sarah returned it. As she pulled Sarah to her, Frost whispered, "Thanks for bringing him back…for bringing him back safe. I am so excited you will be my daughter, Sarah."

Sarah's mouth dropped. Perhaps Ellie had told Frost. Perhaps. But who knew? Frost just knew things. Sarah felt an upsurge of warmth and pleasure. She was to be part of the family. She just needed to help put the family back together.

Frost stepped back from the hug. She looked over Sarah's shoulder.

Chuck was dawdling, walking heavy-legged like a condemned man on the Green Mile. He actually stopped to admire the fountain—delaying the meeting with his mom for as long as he could. Sarah had turned to watch him. When he saw the look in her eyes, he gathered himself and footed the short-long final few feet to Frost.

Almost desperately, Frost reached out and picked up his hand from his side. She put both of hers around it. "We need to talk. I know it. But let me just say this for now. I am sorry, Chuck, for all of it."

He gave her a hard look, lie-detecting with his eyes. But, evidently, he saw no falsity. He leaned toward her and gave her a side hug—warm but non-committal. She seemed satisfied.

"I am going to go and greet the others. Then I need to talk with Major Casey for a little while. You two settle in."

Sarah almost couldn't breathe when they went inside. The apartment must have been shut down as it was when Chuck Bartowski lived there, although it had been very recently cleaned. Other than the plants being gone, along with Ellie and Devon, everything was the same. And yet everything was different.

Sarah's mind translated her to the night she'd come to the house in her purple negligee,—what had Chuck called it, a 'lavender whisper'?—the night they were to pretend to make love. Sarah had come to the door of Chuck's room, a short trench coat over the negligee, her hair curled, her makeup perfect. She had spent hours choosing that negligee and had put on her makeup with as close to surgical focus and her rapid breathing and trembling hands would allow. She kept asking herself: "Sarah, what do you think is going to happen tonight? Tonight is _cover_ , just for the cover. Fake." And yet she had been unable to still her hands—her hands, the hands of an assassin, a martial artist, knife-wielder.

She knew that she if she went to bed with him—really did—she would not just have sex, she would make love to him. She knew that when she told Chuck that they needed to make love. As his handler, even though all she had in mind was pretending, she should have not used those words, 'make love'. They were supercharged words, and she knew (although she knew it of Chuck Carmichael, not Chuck Bartowski, as she thought) what those words would mean to Chuck. And yet she had not been able to keep those words from being spoken, because those were the words that expressed what she really wanted.

The thought of him with Lou made her stomach seize. Made her physically ill. If she couldn't put on that purple negligee and let Chuck take it off her, she could put it on and not let him take it off her, but give him that glimpse of herself, reveal to him what she wanted to give him: all of her. It wasn't fair to him—even without knowing about his photographic memory—and it wasn't fair to her, but the situation wasn't fair, period. Getting into his bed wearing that, even though it would stay on, was the only gift she had to give him, her only way of trying to get him to choose their fake, apparently futureless relationship over the real, perhaps promising relationship she knew he was tempted to pursue with Lou.

When she got to his bedroom door that night, she had partly won the battle with her rapid breathing and shaking hands. And then she saw him among lit candles, dancing unselfconsciously. And she knew how much he wanted it to be real too.

And that's when she started to get angry—not with Chuck, not really, but with the goddamn situation, the life that had brought him to her but would not allow her to have him. The love she felt and denied she felt. And she had let her anger grip her too hard, squeeze her, and before she knew it, without intending it, she was angry with Chuck: angry about those uncalculated smiles of his, about his plebian Chucks, about his refusals to believe her denials, about his awkward, lovable dancing…about his offer to be her baggage handler (her _handler_ —he'd basically given the whole thing away on that first date): angry with him for being _him_ —for being the man she loved and was not allowed to love.

It was no wonder it the night had been a disaster. But she was here again. With Chuck. In love with him, no denials. In love with him, allowed to be. In love with him—for being him. He would be her husband…

}o{

Chuck walked past an abstracted Sarah, gently took her suitcase handle from her hand, and rolled their bags into his old room. He did not want any more interaction with his mom for a minute.

He sat down on the bed. Doing so made him think of the night he and Sarah had planned to 'make love' (her phrase, now that he thought about it) for their cover. He had been sure, really since moments after they first met in the Buy More, that Sarah had never intended to seduce him. He had expected that she would show up, they would sleep together (sleeping, really) and she would go home—but they would both pretend that they had made love.

The prospect of the evening made him anxious and queasy as he put out candles and lit them, and chose the music Chuck Bartowski would choose for such an evening, if it were real—which, it turned out, was exactly the music that Chuck Carmichael would pick.

-But that was the problem, he realized, the reason he was queasy. What if Sarah decided that the threat of Lou required a change in how she related to him? She had no history of seductions in her file, but…she also believed he was the Intersect. Graham and Beckman-and Casey, at least a little, seemed to think she might be slow seducing him so as to take him to Fulcrum. But even they only believed that on the supposition that she had changed, was no longer the CIA agent she had been, but now a Fulcrum double-agent. No, Chuck did not think she was planning to seduce him. But what if she wanted to actually make love to him? He was sure—well, fairly sure—well, it sometimes surely seemed like—she was fond of him. So, say she wanted to make love to him, not seduce him in the spy sense, but to be with him like a real girl with her real boy? If so, she would want to make love to Chuck Bartowski, not Chuck Carmichael. And even though Chuck Carmichael was in love with her, and even though Chuck Bartowski was Chuck Carmichael, Chuck could not allow her to make love to him—to make love to the wrong Chuck. He would be seducing her in the spy sense if he let that happen. So, that was the evening he faced. It was enough to make anyone queasy.

And then she stood in his door, impossibly, utterly beautiful, completely lovable. And then he got frustrated, really, really frustrated—at every level. He thought he could not be more frustrated until she took off her coat and stood before him in the lavender negligee. Never, ever had Chuck hated spies and spying more than he did in that moment. To be so close to the woman he wanted as he had never known wanting before, to have her all-but-offering herself to him, to know that her wearing the negligee but making no move toward him meant that she was not planning to seduce him, but to know too that her anger (and his) meant that they would not be making love but that they had both thought about it…He was filled with a bitter, sharp anger and he took it out on her. He had called her a prostitute, although he had not used the word, and he knew that he had hurt her, mangled the delicate balance of _almost_ she meant the evening to be.

But she was here, in the apartment, with him again. Really with him. His fiancée. He had the ring to prove it...

}o{

Just then, Sarah walked into the room, impossibly, utterly beautiful. She shut and locked the door. Her eyes met Chuck's, flame licking flame, and she knew what he had been thinking about, and she could see he knew the same of her. In one soft stride, Sarah was in front of him. Holding his gaze, she began to unbutton her shirt. He moaned, a little; she gasped slightly in response. "Lavender?" she asked very quietly. He nodded imperatively.

}o{

When they opened the door to Chuck's room, their room, Frost had still not returned. The apartment was empty

Throwing on his shirt and pants, Chuck went to the fridge. It was well-stocked. He grabbed two bottles of water and gave one to Sarah, who had put on one of his t-shirts and padded barefoot behind him. They both drank thirstily.

"Do you think we should go to the other apartment, find out what's going on?"

Sarah tilted her head, pretending to consider the question, then she shook her head. "Nah. Let's stay here. Frost did this on purpose. She's giving us some time. Who knows when we'll get any more time to ourselves, and I feel so wonderful right now, so happy and free, so…glowy. I don't want to have to let go of that feeling," she rubbed herself against him, "anytime soon. Focus, Chuck."

Replenished and refocused, they went back to their room.

}o{

Chuck scanned the room. Everyone was there, in the living room. Food had been ordered in and it was time to talk about Ted Roark. Time to plan.

Frost was doing the talking: "The Ring is on the run across Europe. The roundup of Elders was almost a complete success. But Roark has the new Ring tech, the Intersect tech, and with it he can launch a devastating counter-offensive. It is time to press the advantage, to take him down and dismantle Roark Industries, before that can happen. But we can't wait.

Surveillance on RI, both in-person and satellite, suggests that security is heavier than ever. Also, earlier today, a large van full of people, men and women, arrived. We believe they are 'volunteers' for the tech. Given what Julie has told me," Frost nodded in Julie's direction, "it is unlikely that implants will be started until tomorrow at the earliest. There is prep work that has to be done with the 'volunteers' before the implant surgery. But that means we need to strike by tomorrow at the latest. We want to stop the implants, not fight with implantees-certainly not with a lot of them. These folks are Ring agents, but they don't deserve the fate Roark has in store for them."

Chuck jumped in. "But can't the tech be taken out?"

"Not really," Julie answered, "the implant is a bit of AI but once it forces the cognitive rearrangement and displacement (those are the RI scientists' terms) the brain can't…reshuffle itself. Implantees are damned with it and damned without it." She looked and sounded disgusted, downcast. Chuck dropped his chin in thanks for the answer, trying to look encouraging.

Frost: "Right. So, we are trying to save the enemy—or at least some of the enemy. I have made Julie a promise. We will do everything in our power to take Ted Roark alive. We have known about Roark's connection to the Ring for a long time, but he has so much influence in DC that we could never get anyone to let us move against him without absolutely convincing evidence.

"The recording of the Ring meeting, and Julie here, constituted absolutely convincing evidence. We have the green light. But there is reason to worry that even the Oversight Committee, who has given the green light, may have Ring connections among its members. The green light was given by the Chairman. He has not yet told the committee. But he must. He will delay telling them until tomorrow night. If all goes well, we will have finished before he tells them what we have done. Even at that level, ask for forgiveness, not permission.

"We will refine the plan further tomorrow, but the basic idea is a two-pronged attack. Major Casey and his team will make a frontal assault on the facility. While that happens, our team—Chuck, Sarah, Carina and Ilsa and I-will enter the facility through the private entrance Roark uses, an entrance Julie will show us. She will get us to the entrance, then she and Ilsa will stay behind, to keep it open so that we can get out. Martin will be at the Buy More, coordinating the two attacks. He will be able to keep us in synch, moving in the right direction."

Carina, who was sitting on the arm of a chair Martin was in, smiled at him although he did not see it. Behind them, Casey shook his head good-naturedly, evidently wondering how he ended up on a mission quarterbacked from the Buy More by the dipshit.

Chuck looked back at Frost. Concern on her face, she looked around the room. "Our hope is that Casey's team can coax security, or most of them, out toward the perimeter of the facility. We slip inside, behind them as it were, and destroy the Intersect tech, as well as anything we can find related to it—surgery areas, computers, etc. I want to salt the earth where the tech is concerned: when we leave, I want it gone, part of history.

"Any other questions?"

Sarah asked one. "Mary, are we sure Ted Roark is there, in the facility?" Frost looked at Julie as she answered. "No, not one-hundred percent. He was last seen shortly before the Ring Meeting would have taken place in Paris. He's not been seen since. But he was seen here, entering the facility. We think it very likely he is there."

Julie spoke after Frost. "Dad is hands-on. Although the Ring's Elders in the US are still unidentified, there's a good chance that their identities will become known as the European Elders are taken and questioned, their activities and contacts thoroughly sifted." She looked at Frost. Frost motioned for her to continue. "As I told Frost…um…Chuck's mom, this is Dad's big play." She paused, hesitant, gathering her thoughts and preparing to share something new and unpleasant. "Dad's been fascinated by assassins for years. Particularly, Rashid ad-Din Sinan," Julie started…

"The Old Man of the Mountains?" The question was from Martin. Julie nodded, surprised, and Martin explained. "Back in my early days as an analyst, Graham set me a task: compile a complete file on the history of assassins. The trail led me back to that guy. Information's sort of sketchy, but the legend is clear enough. Centuries ago, this guy took young men, late teens, got them high on hashish, and while kept them high, he put them into his gardens and he forced women to have sex with them. When they came down, he told them they had been to Paradise and that they would go back if they died in his service.

"They believed him, took him to be some kind of prophet or semi-divinity, and he then trained them as killers. He sent them out to sneak into the private quarters of rich and powerful men, leaving behind ransom letters, explaining that unless the Old Man of the Mountains was paid a tribute, the assassin would return and, well, carry out the assassination.

"Whether the whole story—the hashish, the women—is true, it is true that he created fearless assassins willing to die to complete their mission. If one was kept from completing the mission, he would just send others until one succeeded."

Everyone looked from Martin to Julie. "Yes, and Dad has similar aspirations. Because, you see, this initial group of implantees is not just going to have the bonuses in intelligence and physical prowess the implant gives them, but each will also have a high-ranking US politician or person of influence as a target. After the implants are killed or die, Dad will create more.

"Once these people, the targets, understand the threat they are under, Dad is confident he will be untouchable. Frost fears he will be right. He intended me to at least be the figurehead of a similar plot in Europe, once he had facilities ready there. He has facilities under construction in Europe—or did, and in a couple of other places, although none are yet ready to produce implantees. But I believe one or two are very close."

"Just how much of US intelligence information does Roark have, how much would these implantees, these Intersect assassins, know?" Casey's face was drawn with worry.

"We aren't sure," Frost admitted. "We have to assume the implantees would have access to quite a lot."

Martin raised his hand and Frost looked at him. "But why would these agents do what Roark wants? I mean," Martin shifted his gaze to Julie, "he's not got…Paradise, right?"

"That's right," Frost answered, drawing attention from Julie, "but these are 'volunteers', true believers in the Ring, haters of the current holders of power, the existing political systems. Men and women who have lived hard, often desperate lives, and who have been alienated and radicalized. They showed up ready to die for Roark, for the Ring, for whatever it is he had promised them, collectively or individually. But they don't realize the implant guarantees that they will die for Roark.

"Julie said that one promise she knows he has made is to take care of any family members the 'volunteer' leaves behind. Let's face it, since 9/11, we all know that there are plenty of folks out there ready to die, and to kill others, for a cause—or, hell, for nothing more than 15 minutes of fame."

No one disagreed.

Martin looked across the room to Sarah. "You know, Sarah, now that I think about it, Graham had me doing that work on assassins at around the time you would've been at the Farm or maybe just after, I wonder…"

The room grew quiet. Sarah's voice was soft, almost as if she were in a trance, but everyone could hear her, "…You wonder if he was my Old Man of the Mountain, if the research you did shaped Graham's treatment of me, use of me…"

"Yeah, yeah, sorry, maybe I shouldn't have…"

Sarah's voice returned to normal. "No, it's ok, Martin. It's not really news to me, although I hadn't understood it in those terms. And I hadn't realized that he had a model, and a plan, from that early on.

"And he tried to build his own Intersect, remember. He must have had a plan a lot like Roark's for it, if the CIA scientists had been successful. Luckily, Graham wanted an Intersect grander than Roark's; if he'd lowered his sights, he might have gotten to where Roark is getting." Chuck added.

He looked at Julie. "Why didn't you tell us about this plan in Paris, or on the plane?"

Julie's face showed her regret and her shame. "I know I should have—but it is hard enough to admit your father's a villain. It's even worse to admit…he's a monster. He's still my dad, after all, no matter what he's done," she paused, and glanced from Chuck to Frost, "no matter what he is.

"I hoped we could get to him before all this got started, that you could find out about it on your own, once he was in custody, so I wouldn't have to say it all myself. I didn't want to have to color him as bad as…as bad as he is. I'm sorry if that sounds selfish…"

Frost responded. Kindly. "Well, we know now. Knowing a few hours ago would not have made a material difference to our planning, so don't be too hard on yourself, Julie. Some secrets are harder to tell than others."

Food arrived, and the planning session ended. Chuck and Sarah had just gone outside with their food, to eat beside the fountain, when Frost came running out, phone in hand.

"What is it, Mom?" Chuck saw her whitened face.

"That was Ellie. Stephen is missing from the hospital in Columbus! No one knows how he could have gotten out. But he is gone."

* * *

 **A/N2** There was an Old Man of the Mountains. I've told his story loosely, and for my own purposes.

Tune in next time for Chapter 34 "Quarry Hymns". The attack on the RI facility begins.

And where the hell is Stephen?

Hat's off, reviews being solicited...


	34. Chapter 34: Quarry Hymns

**A/N1** By my plan, we have this chapter and then two more longish chapters. Of course, plans can change, but that is the plan. I do believe I will write a Postlude—but we will see about that. You can let me know if you want one. I worry the story is already too long.

Anyhoo—I'm back from Iowa City, son graduated. All good. I hope all of you are well, wherever you are.

Chapter title here, like last time, taken from a Land of Talk song. The chorus asks: "How deep is this hole I feel I'm in?" A question I have imagined Chuck asking himself since he was first taken into Castle. (I wonder if anyone out there ever thinks about the various connections between my chapter titles and the chapters? Or do folks just ignore the chapter titles?)

Thanks for reading and reviewing. If you're out there reading and you've enjoyed the story, but not reviewed (or not much), how about a word or two (send a PM if you don't want to post a review) as we finish this thing up? It's all the thanks we storytellers get!

Don't Own Chuck.

* * *

 **Turned Tables**

 _Land of Talk Mission_

* * *

Saturday, March 1, 2008  
RI Facility, Los Angeles  
11:54 pm

* * *

CHAPTER 34 Quarry Hymns

* * *

Chuck was struggling desperately to recall the name of that tepid Richard Gere movie, the one about the doctor and all the women—and then it hit him, the 't' in 'tepid' jostling loose the title, _Dr. T & the Women_. Chuck was struggling to remember because he was starring in its spied-up sequel, _Agent C & the Women_.

It's not that Chuck was complaining. Four of the women with him were deadly—maybe all five: Julie had come close to killing him when she left him at Stanford. But four were highly successful field agents. Two of them, Frost and Sarah, were specially trained for and specially gifted at violence.

No, he wasn't complaining, it just seemed—noteworthy. He was literally the odd man out.

He was standing near a heavy metal door at the end of a darkened, ridiculously long tunnel. Behind Chuck, along one wall, stood Sarah and behind her, Carina. On the other side of Chuck, next to the door, were Julie and Ilsa—and Frost.

Chuck should have asked his mom why she hadn't been accounted for in the plan the night before. He should have known she wouldn't be staying in the Buy More with Martin. He should have known she be right _here_.

}o{

 _Last night, his mother had handed him the phone, let him talk to Ellie._

 _"_ _El? Mom told me. What do you know? How long has he been gone?"_

 _"_ _Chuck," Chuck felt affection warm him as he heard his sister's voice, and he sort of lost track of the fact that he was—wasn't he?—angry with her, "it's so good to hear you. Dad was in his room at noon, for lunch. He woke up yesterday morning but was uncommunicative. I tried to explain things to him, in a very general way, a gentle way. I expected him to be terrified or panicked—and incoherent—but he seemed calm, almost, like he was rested. He didn't say anything. He listened. But then he seemed to lose focus, sort of like years ago, and he no longer seemed to be listening. He drifted away. In a little while, he was asleep._

 _"_ _I decided to let him sleep and to try again after lunch. When the nurse went in to get his tray, his bed was empty." Ellie was clearly trying to stay calm, but not clearly succeeding._

 _"_ _Doesn't the hospital have cameras, El? Don't they show anything?"_

 _"_ _Well," Ellie sounded apologetic, "I had everything taken out of Dad's room. I didn't want anyone to hear or see what happened in there…But, yes, the hospital has cameras. The problem is that they shut down for ten minutes after lunch, 12:20-12:30. That must have been when Dad disappeared."_

 _"_ _So, he was taken?"_

 _"_ _Yes, yeah, I guess so. But no one knew we were here but Beckman. And I really don't think she's behind this. Mom doesn't either. He's just gone." He could hear the frustration with herself in Ellie's voice. "Beckman contacted local LEO's and the Ohio State Highway Patrol. A BOLO is out, no names, just a description. God, how could this have happened?"_

 _"_ _Not your fault, sis. Not in any way. Look, make sure you've talked to anyone who might have even been near the room around the time in question." Ellie agreed to do it. "Also, weird question, but could Dad use a phone, a cell phone, say, if he wanted to make a call?" Ellie was quiet, surprised by the question. "I don't know, Chuck. He used computers in Castle, ones we had set up for him to use. They were air-gapped, so no one could get to them or Dad get to anything…that might have upset him, set him back. But he's Dad, Chuck, he's you—Inspector Gadget. So, my guess is that he could figure it out, if he was 'lucid'. I don't know what to call the state he was in before he went to sleep."_

 _"_ _Ok. Well, we'll have to hope it wasn't Roark, the Ring. If it was, I have a feeling we will know it soon enough." Chuck felt a lump of ice, worry, forming deep in his stomach. "Keep us up to date."_

 _"_ _I will, Chuck, and, hey, little brother, I love you, you know that don't you?"_

 _Chuck paused, probably for a second longer than he should have. "Yeah, Ellie, I do, and I love you too."_

 _"_ _Congrats on the engagement. You chose a good one, Chuck. I love her too. Tell her for me."_

 _"_ _I will." Chuck knew his smile could be heard in his voice. "I'm going to give you back to Mom." He handed Frost the phone._

 _Sarah had been standing beside him the whole time, her hand softly on his shoulder. He turned to her and explained the situation. She nodded, worried and afraid for his Dad._

 _And then he told her what Ellie said, and, despite the situation, she gave him one of her fabulous smiles. It made him feel so much better to see it, melted some of the worry that had been chilling him._

}o{

The tunnel ran from beneath the RI Corporate Building to beneath the RI Research Facility. It was the secret tunnel Roark used to go from one building to the other unseen.

Julie was about to press her hand against the security panel.

Chuck stopped her with a whisper. "Are you sure you will still be able to open this? Once you disappeared, won't your Dad have changed to locks, so to speak?"

"He didn't. My fingerprint was scanned on the elevator that got us down here, so he hasn't taken me out of the system. But I knew he wouldn't. I'm sure that he's sure I will be back—either of my own volition or because he…reclaimed me. And, you know what? He was right. And wrong. I am back. But not to help him. He's sure of himself and of me; I'm going to help make him unsure." She pressed her palm against the panel.

}o{

 _"_ _So, Mom, do you trust Julie?" Chuck had walked away from the fountain toward the edge of the courtyard. Frost was pacing there. He knew she was worried about Stephen. He decided to try to take her mind off it for a minute._

 _She gave him a brief, indecipherable look. "Yes, Chuck, I do. She's in a strange situation, dragooned into a life she does not want by someone she loves…It's not just a strange situation, it's hurtful." She glanced at Chuck, but her attention was inward. "I know I am not the authority on who to trust or why," she screwed her features tight in self-loathing, "but I do trust her."_

 _"_ _I do too, Mom, I guess. But she has doled out information in scraps and not always in the best order, and what she has told us has been…vague, hard to fully reconcile."_

 _"_ _All true, Chuck. Good for you for noticing—you really are a spy, a good one, when you want to be," she stopped to check his face, afraid she might have upset him. "She is torn. She has to tell what she knows, but she doesn't want to know it, and so doesn't want to tell it._

 _"_ _Some words are hard to say, Chuck, not because they are hard to pronounce, but because the word is a pronouncement on your life, or on someone you love, a sentence and a verdict all at once._

 _"_ _As for her vagueness, I suspect that Roark has shown less of his hand to Julie than she thinks. He's told her the truth, but not the whole truth. That we will find out tomorrow night. Anyway, from her point of view, she's telling us exactly what she knows. But what she knows is vague. She doesn't know how it all really fits together."_

 _Chuck mulled that over, looking into his mother's face—drawn, lined and darkened by anxiety. He suddenly felt sorry for her. Genuinely sorry. Despite…everything._

 _"_ _Look, Mom, we've been using talk about Julie to talk about us too. I get that you are sorry for what you did. I get that you want me to forgive you for it. I…I_ want to _forgive you," Chuck heard the struggle in his own voice, "but right now, that's the best I can do. This is going to take me some time._

 _"_ _Things between us have never been…great, and what you did smashed them. Maybe we can find our way…not back, because I don't want to be in that…_ not-great place _again…But maybe we can find our way to a new place, a better place."_

 _He stopped for a moment and looked across the courtyard at his fiancée, laughing with Carina and Martin by the fountain, and then he looked back at his mom._

 _"_ _Falling in love with Sarah has been the greatest thing that's ever happened to me, Mom. And loving her has helped me understand you better. You two are alike—but different._

 _"I don't agree with choices you have made—I don't plan to make the same choices—but I understand better why you made them, how the world looked to you when you made them, how easy it is for a spy to confuse life with a mission…How easy it is to get soul-sucked into the hole of the spy life."_

 _Frost looked at Chuck. She had tears tracking fitfully down her cheeks. "Thank you, son. I'm not going to defend my choices. They look awful to me in retrospect—and to be honest, they mostly didn't look very good to me at the moment I made them. But I could never work out how to be a spy and a mom at the same time—the math was too hard."_

 _"_ _Maybe that was part of the problem, Mom._ Math _. Life's not a math problem, no matter how compelling that fantasy sometimes seems. Listen to your heart, not your head, Mom. Dad and Ellie and me—we weren't just your analyst and your assets, Mom, stuck with you in some years-long mission, trapped beneath the horizon of that mission. We were your husband, your daughter and your son. You were our wife and mother. That was not your_ deep cover _—it was your life. But you treated it as your deep cover. We all felt it, even if we didn't know it or how to articulate it or understand it fully._

 _"_ _And then keeping the truth about Dad from me. That was to simply make me an asset, manipulatable. You chose to be Dad's handler and mine. If we are ever going to find our way to a better place, you need to stop being my handler and be my mother. Maybe I can forgive my mom for this; I'm pretty sure I can't forgive a handler for this."_

 _Frost stepped toward him. "I know it's late in the game. I know I don't deserve…I_ know _, I really do know, Chuck. But I want to be your mom, really, I do. When we finish this, I will find a way to do that, I promise you." She started to open her arms. Chuck could see the indecision in her eyes, her shaky fear of rejection, so he wrapped her in his arms and hugged her._

 _He sighed to himself._ My mom, the spy _. No, it wasn't all better, maybe it never would be, exactly, but keeping her unhappy was also keeping him (and Sarah too) unhappy._

 _"_ _Ok, Mom."_

}o{

Julie pressed her palm against the reader. For a breathless moment, everyone stood stock-still. Then the door unlocked, with a metallic clunk.

Frost reached out and turned the knob. The door swung in, toward her. A series of light clicked on, one at a time, leading from the opened door down another corridor, a short one. The lights stopped at a metal door with no window. It was plain steel except for a large numeral '1' painted on it.

Frost held up her hand, holding everyone in place. She watched the second hand of her watch. There was a muffled boom. Casey had arrived.

Frost motioned for them to move into the corridor.

Julie and Ilsa stood back. They would stay at the door that they had just opened, try to make sure that this exit from the facility remained available.

Chuck looked at Julie as he passed. "So, three floors, right?"

She nodded. "The First below-ground floor is top-secret R&D, second is the medical floor, and the third is Dad's private offices."

There were more muffled booms and the crackling sound of gunfire. Chuck saw Ilsa look up and away, worry on her face—and he saw Sarah notice it too.

}o{

 _Sarah watched Chuck finish his talk with his mom, watched him hug Frost. Sarah was hopeful; maybe they were going to start repairing the damage. She went to Chuck._

 _Sarah took Chuck's hand and led him into the apartment and into their bedroom. As Sarah locked the Morgan door, and was about to draw the curtain, she saw Ilsa and Casey come out the other apartment._

 _They both looked emotional, overwrought. Casey closed the door but stood standing close to it. Ilsa turned to face him and reached out, cupping his elbow in her hand. As the light shifted onto her face, Sarah could see that she had been crying._

 _To his credit, Casey did not seem as absolutely uncomfortable. His stony mask had cracked: distress and sympathy showed through. He nodded in response to something she said, then he reached up with his other hand and traced his fingers gently along her cheek, wiping away her remaining tears. He then kissed her cheek and gave her a long, serious look. She looked back with a small, tight smile. Casey turned slowly and then went inside._

 _Ilsa got as far as the fountain before she started to cry again. Momentarily blinded by her tears, she found the fountain with her hand and sat down. Chuck had been watching the scene over Sarah's shoulder. He looked at Sarah when she noticed him, and she briefly told him what was going on, told him Ilsa's story. He put his hands softly on Sarah's shoulders._

 _"_ _Why don't you go talk to her, Sarah?" His voice was thick with emotion._

 _Sarah had already decided to do that, so she went outside and sat down. Ilsa was no longer crying. She was staring hard at the ground and did not react to Sarah's arrival. Sarah waited._

 _Eventually, Ilsa lifted her eyes._

 _"_ _I saw that you talked to Casey."_

 _"_ _Yes, I explained why I had to fake my death those years ago, and how much I hated having to do that, how much I hated losing him. But, he understood that, and he can let it go. Neither of us was fully honest with the other—although, in those times when we were…together…" she glanced back to the apartment door, "…we told each other the truth, even if we rarely spoke. I felt it and he did too. He admitted it, in his way, tonight."_

 _Sarah smiled a little. "Yes, he does have a way about him." Both women chuckled, although Ilsa's chuckle was dampened by the remnants of tears._

 _"_ _Did you talk about…the other thing?"_

 _Ilsa looked up at Sarah. "I did…He saw where the story was leading and told me that I did not need to say any of it, but I told him I did need to tell him…He listened. And then he held me and told me that he was so sorry, so sorry that this life forced me into such a profound compromise, into such misery. And he held me, Sarah." Ilsa smiled weakly._

 _"_ _But Ilsa, that all sounds…good. What is the matter?"_

 _"_ _Although I wanted Casey to hold me, Sarah, I really did, and although a part of me rejoiced when he put his arms around me—another part of me rebelled, wanted to escape his embrace. It was the first time a man has held me since…that night. I pulled away from him. Or, no, not from him, but from the contact itself…" Ilsa looked lost and defeated. "My feelings were not about Casey, or about the contact, exactly. It was that the contact made me feel…it made me feel like I was not worthy of a man like Casey, like my worth had been taken from me…Like I was wrong to accept his embrace, the embrace of a good man."_

 _Sarah scooted closer to Ilsa and put her arm around her. "Ilsa, no one, man or woman, can take your worth from you. They can deny it, make you doubt or deny it, but they cannot take it. You have worth. You are worthy of Casey._

 _"_ _I saw him wipe away your tears—tenderly. John Casey touched you tenderly. If that doesn't convince you that he thinks you are worthy, you don't know him—and you do know him, even if you knew him in a vale of lies._

 _"_ _But what matters most is that you know you're of worth. The time to give up on yourself is never, Ilsa. Never. I've learned that—or I'm learning it. It'll take time—be patient with yourself, kind to yourself. Be patient with Casey. You both have a lot to learn and re-learn about each other."_

 _Ilsa laughed, a little heartier this time. "You know, when Carina used to tell me about you, she said that you rarely spoke, rarely did anything but work, -you are not the woman she described to me."_

 _Sarah looked at the Morgan door. The light in the room was still on; Chuck was waiting for her. She focused again on Ilsa._

 _"_ _No, I'm not. I discovered that I am not the woman I used to be, believed I was. I've made discoveries about myself. I've changed. Loving Chuck changed me. Being loved by Chuck changed me. Love changes you. That's part of what it is. Love makes you surprise you."_

 _"_ _But spies hate surprises, Sarah."_

 _"_ _Right, just like spies don't fall in love."_

 _Ilsa had brightened considerably. "Touché, Sarah. I am again in your debt."_

 _"_ _No, Ilsa, we're friends. There aren't debts between friends."_

}o{

Frost hissed: "Time to go, ladies—and gentleman!"

She led them through the '1' door and into the stairwell. She had her pistol out. The look on her face frightened him. Maybe Chuck wasn't always glad she was his mother—but he was very glad she was on his side.

As the door closed behind them, he heard one more muffled boom. Casey. He hoped to God that Casey and his men would make it. In this plan, Casey and his men were The Magnet.

}o{

 _After Sarah came in from her talk with Ilsa, Chuck tried unsuccessfully to go to sleep. But his head and heart were too full. Sarah—in and then out of that lavender negligee. His mom and their talk. The story about Ilsa. Sarah's re-telling of their fountain conversation._

 _He was glad Sarah was able to sleep. He got up carefully and put on a sweatshirt over his t-shirt. He slipped his feet into his untied Chucks. He went outside. He was standing by the fountain, trying to clear his mind, when he heard a voice. He looked into the darkness between apartments and saw a bright orange glow hanging in mid-air. The voice seemed to have issued from it. But Chuck knew the voice._

 _Casey, lit cigar gripped fiercely between his teeth (Chuck involuntarily thought of all those drawings of J. Jonah Jameson in the Spider-Man comics), stepped into the light._

 _"_ _Carmichael. What are you doing up at this hour? Don't you need your beauty sleep?"_

 _Before Chuck could answer, Casey went on. "I take it you and Agent Walker have come to some…understanding?"_

 _Chuck was unsure how to respond, but went with the unvarnished truth. "Yeah, Casey, we're engaged."_

 _"_ _I thought I heard overseas pops when the two of you got your heads out of your asses. Good for you, Carmichael. And good for Walker. Really...Wait a minute, is that why your ring finger is trussed up like a bag of Wonder Bread?"_

 _Chuck held up his hand. "Yeah, she didn't have a ring when she asked me." He grinned—flummoxed a bit by Casey's grabbing his hand to stare more closely at the twist-tie ring. Was he admiring it?_

 _"I tell you, Carmichael, you don't do anything the ordinary way. Walker asked because you were too chicken?" Casey looked suspiciously like he was tempted to make clucking sounds._

 _"_ _No, but you were right about my head being up my ass, frankly. It wasn't about Sarah, though, it was about…"_

 _"_ _Frost," Casey completed Chuck's thought. "I could tell something was up between you two. She told me enough to piece it together. Your dad's some kind of real Intersect, right? Top top-secret. Roark and the Ring tried to kill him."_

 _Chuck nodded one time. "And she kept your dad and his condition from you—for years?"_

 _"_ _Yeah, she did."_

 _"_ _Damn. I get it. The head-up-the-ass thing. That'd do it to anyone. But, Carmichael, you aren't going to get another mother. You're assigned one of those at birth, by birth, and even though the doctors cut the cord, you're bound to her for life. We all get dropped into the world, tied to people we don't know, no choice about who or where or how."_

 _Chuck sighed heavily. "I know. I'm working on it."_

 _"_ _I'm betting on you, Carmichael. Lady-feelings are your thing." Casey delivered the last line flat, and Chuck could not tell if it was an insult, a compliment, or both at the same time. A complisult?_

 _"_ _Speaking of lady-feelings, Casey, how are things with you and Ilsa?" Chuck knew he was putting his head on the block. Casey's eyes flashed anger. But then Chuck saw him rein it in._

 _"_ _We're talking." Casey offered this as a full, even robust, answer._

 _Chuck looked away. "This life, huh?"_

 _"_ _Yeah, this life. Shitty. Especially for women, given the way things are, given that bad guys are, in fact, typically bad_ guys _. And unfortunately, a lot of the 'good guys' are really bad guys. Why they sent Ilsa into that mission without adequate back-up, without making sure that even if she made a mistake, she could get out…If I get to France, I'm gonna kick some froggy ass, bet on that…" The threat ended as a growl._

 _Casey re-lit his cigar, creating a large, dark cloud of blue-gray smoke that encircled himself and Chuck. Chuck started to cough. Casey whacked him hard on the back, repeatedly._

 _"_ _Ow! Yeah, yeah, Casey, that helped." Chuck rotated his shoulders, trying to realign his spine. "So, you aren't going to tell me that Ilsa did her duty, served the Greater Good, you know, the shit you used to bark at me all the time?"_

 _Casey was growing exercised. Puffing away. "Damn it, Carmichael, [puff] think! I talked to you about decisions I made. How I gave up a home and a family to do this job [puff]. Those were legitimate sacrifices. It is not wrong to give up on having a family. It is not wrong to give up on having a home [puff]. I didn't ever say I did something wrong to do this job." He ground to a halt._

 _Stopped._

 _Swallowed._

 _Looked disgusted with himself._

 _"_ _I mean…[puff] I_ have _done things that were wrong for this job, and those things...[puff] keep me awake at night…[puff] but I never thought doing them for the job would magically make them_ right _. Shit, if I did, I guess I'd sleep like a baby, instead of pacing courtyards…[puff] chasing and being chased by demons._

 _"_ _Same with Ilsa. She believes she did something wrong. The fact that it happened to her while doing the job doesn't make that belief go away, doesn't make her believe it was right." Casey's cigar was glowing bright red-orange, burning fast._

 _"_ _She blames herself. I don't blame her. I hate it for her; I don't blame her. She was in a godrotting goddamned situation…[puff] [puff] There's not always a way to avoid wrong, not always some way to reprogram the fuckin' computer, not always some way out of a…_ Kobayashi Maru _—or whatever the hell you rambled on about to me one night out here, months ago, when you insisted on ruining our downtime." Casey had yanked his cigar from his mouth and was using it to punctuate his speech._

 _Chuck put up his hands in submission. "Ok, Casey, ok. I just want you to know that I think you did_ good _with Ilsa tonight. She came all this way mainly for you, you know. She wants to stop the Ring, sure, but she's here for you, for the two of you."_

 _Casey looked down. Chewed angrily on his cigar. Spat. "Yeah, I know. I'm glad, although it makes the mission harder, worrying about her, her worrying about me. Spies don't fall in love—except when they do—and then they're still goddamned spies."_

 _"_ _You don't have to be, Casey. You could find something else to do."_

 _Casey nodded, shaking the long, grey ash from the end of his cigar and watching it crumble as it hit the sidewalk. "Yeah, yeah. But I'm an old dog—not sure I'm up to new tricks."_

 _"_ _I'm pretty sure you can do anything you put your mind to, Casey."_

 _"_ _Thanks, Carmichael. Now get back in there with your fiancée, where you belong. Before she comes out here and kicks my ass for keeping her boy-toy up." He fussed with his cigar. It had gone out again. He fished in his pocket for a lighter, found it, and fired the cigar back up._

}o{

Just as the group got to the bottom of the flight of stairs, they heard Martin over the comms.

"Casey's team is already taking heavy fire. Roark's security is seriously weaponed-up. Not sure how much longer Casey can hold on. Hurry! If they have to fall back, you're going to have security—seriously armed security—heading downstairs, into that damn tech quarry."

Frost slammed into the door at the bottom of the stairway. The group burst into a well-lit but empty hallway.

The air had that nothing-ozone smell that Chuck associated with computer research. An alarm, high-pitched and loud, began to sound.

On the near end of the hallway were double-doors under a sign: _RI R &D_. On the far end was another door, marked by a numeral '2'. Frost gestured for Chuck and Sarah to go to the near end of the hall. She and Carin headed for the far end.

Sarah began to run to the R&D doors. Chuck scrambled, caught up. He swung his backpack off as they reached the door. He had thermite charges inside.

The wail of the siren was drilling through his ears and into his skull:

 _WwwweeeeewerrrWeeeewwerrr…_

* * *

 **A/N2** Yeah, that was annoying. Stopping there, I mean, not the siren. Although it is annoying too. (Hard to write a siren's part. A little like Joyce's trying to write thunder's part in _Finnegans Wake_.).

This was a teasing chapter if you were braced for action. Hang in there. Action aplenty in Chapter 35 "The Hate I Won't Commit". Look for it this weekend.


	35. Chapter 35: The Hate I Won't Commit

**A/N1** Here we are, closing in on the end of _TT TLS_. It's been fun—but I'll save the salutations for the next chapter, the one that will end our little tale. I am still leaning toward a Postlude, but am unsure; I need to hear from more of you. Will you read it if I write it? Do you want it?

Another chapter title taken from a Land of Talk song. Say, a reader wrote a theme song for TT TLS! Very cool. If I can figure out how to post it on Tumblr, I will. More about that next time, maybe.

Thanks so much for reading and reviewing.

Don't own Chuck

* * *

 **Turned Tables**

 _Land of Talk Mission_

* * *

Saturday, March 1, 2008  
Roark Industries  
11:59 pm

* * *

CHAPTER 35 The Hate I Won't Commit

* * *

 _WwwweeeeewerrrWeeeewwerrr…_

}o{

 _Earlier Saturday_

Early in the afternoon of the raid, everyone assembled at the Buy More-the defunct Buy More. Although it was unclear it had ever really been… _funct_.

All the product was gone: appliances, electronics, music, videos. But all the signage was still there—in all its green and yellow-gold vainglory. _Buy More, Save More_. Etc. Chuck shook his head at the twisted logic of that, and of the other signs. Almost nothing sold in a Buy More would count as a necessity, and yet the signage all assumed that everything counted as a necessary of life.

Chuck and Sarah had both walked in and stopped.

Each was staring at the Nerd Herd desk. Without realizing they did it, they joined hands and walked to the desk. Neither knew quite what to say—it was like standing before an altar. The moment of their meeting meant so much to them both, and the early weeks and months of their relationship—call it cover or cover-cover or whatever—had mostly taken place around that desk. It was the axis of reference for their love. They joined hands standing before it. Chuck leaned toward Sarah and she stood up on her toes for a kiss. Without either of them intending for it to do so, the kiss deepened of its own accord, sweeping each into the other's full embrace. When they finally broke the kiss—both flushed and panting—Martin was standing on the other side of the desk, grinning at them.

Ignoring Martin for a moment, Chuck gazed into Sarah's eyes, the earth of his gaze meeting the sky of hers. "I was just thinking about things that are necessary to a good life and things that aren't. You, Sarah Walker, are a necessity of life for me. I can't do this without you. I wouldn't want to, if I could."

Chuck then turned to Martin, who held out a small, square velvet box. Sarah's mouth fell open; Chuck opened the box. Inside was a stunning diamond ring, the diamond itself and the gold of the band all the adornment that the ring required—it was beautiful in and of itself.

"Chuck…" Sarah breathed out his name. She felt giddy and grounded all at once—surprised and yet utterly sure of herself. Chuck took the ring from the box and took her hand. He poised the ring just beyond the tip of her ring finger and lifted his eyes from her hand to her face. His gaze requested permission. She nodded, a huge, decisive nod lit by a radiant smile, and he slid the ring onto her finger. She wondered at it in rapt happiness.

"Perfect." Sarah managed to get the one word out before she choked up.

Martin grinned at them both, joyous for them. "I told you, Chuck. All you need is the girl. And you've got her."

Sarah threw her arms around Chuck and hugged him, then she stepped back and kissed him.

Martin spoke once more: "Mr. Walker, let me present Mrs. Bartowski. Mrs. Bartowski, Mr. Walker." Chuck looked lovingly into Sarah's eyes, then he picked up her hand and they both looked at the ring.

"But I can still wear mine, right?" Chuck asked.

Sudden clapping interrupted Sarah's _yes_. Everyone had converged on them, led by Frost, and Chuck and Sarah were enveloped by people, engulfed by hug after hug. Even Carina seemed genuinely happy. Frost cried. _Frost_ cried.

At one point, from behind him, Chuck heard Casey turn to Ilsa: "Hell of a way to run a mission," he exclaimed.

Her answer was a patient exhale of his name. "John…"

}o{

 _WwwweeeeewerrrWeeeewwerrr…_

}o{

They had no more information on Stephen.

Frost and, later that morning, Chuck, had both talked to Ellie. She had one more person to question but she thought all her leads were gone. The only possible thread she found was a car stolen from the hospital parking deck. It belonged to an intern who had worked a three-day shift, and who did not realize the car was missing until that morning. But the car had turned up a few miles from the hospital, parked in another parking deck, on a little-used long-term parking floor.

Frost was convinced that the Ring had Stephen, and she expected Roark to use Stephen against them or as a bargaining chip for Julie.

Frost was frightened. Her anxiety was making her already-over-the-top manner even worse. At one point, Chuck thought she was going to insist on dressing him for the mission.

He'd tried to calm her down but the more they talked about Stephen the odder and more complicated the discussion became. Chuck expected her to leave, to look for Stephen herself. But she did not.

When he had asked why she gave him a strange look. "Chuck, what's about to happen here, our raid on RI, is something your father has urged and urged. My gut tells me that he will be involved—somehow. Roark will have him, Roark will have brought him here maybe, but Stephen will see this end. One way or the other. They've been enemies— _nemeses_ —for a long time."

Frost tried to say this with bravado, yet it rang false to Chuck; she was trying to convince herself but failing. Chuck wanted to finish the mission—get through the night—so that he could look for his dad himself. Assuming, that is, that Frost was wrong, and Roark, the Ring, did not have him.

Chuck finished outfitting himself. He had a low-profile backpack with extra tranqs, thermite charges, and stun grenades. Sarah had no backpack. She had on double shoulder holsters, one for a tranq gun, the other for her usual pistol. She had throwing knives strapped to her calf and a combat knife sheathed on her belt.

She lifted a bandolier of knives over her head, sticking her arm through it so that it hung across her body. When she turned to Chuck as she tightened it, she laughed. He was staring at her—his eyes darkened by desire, over a bright abstracted smile of adoration.

"Thinking about this outfit…and our bedroom, Chuck?"

He shook his head a little and released a long slow gasp-sigh. "Yeah."

She reached out one hand, and ran her index finger along his jawline, ear to chin. "Put it out of your mind for now, sweetie. But I would be more than happy to wear this for you if we make it through tonight. We have a ring to celebrate, once we get rid of the Ring."

She waved her hand, displaying her ring. She also had on the heart he gave her for Valentine's Day, and she grabbed it and stowed it beneath the collar of her dark t-shirt.

Chuck squeezed his eyes shut. "Here's to celebrating." He grabbed her, lifted her, and spun her. She laughed and kissed him as they spun, round and round.

}o{

 _WwwweeeeewerrrWeeeewwerrr…_

}o{

She stood in the armory, and at some level inside her, Sarah knew the Ice Queen was hot, fuming. A ring, a necklace, renewed promises—in the middle of a mission! But, even fuming, the Ice Queen had no more power over Sarah than Sarah was willing to grant her. The Ice Queen was part of the past, a queen without a queendom.

Yes, something awful could happen tonight, to her or to Chuck, or to family or friends. She would do everything in her considerable power to prevent it. But she was not going to miss moments like these, moments of joy she could gather like bright jewels, in order to brood darkly over the mission.

They had a good team. They had a plan. She was no longer running from her past. She no longer needed the new mission to distract her from her life, from all the lies that had been her life. She had a life now, no longer riddled by falsity—a life she had claimed, and she was not about to quitclaim. Her aim was true. Trustworthy. She was not going to replace running from her past by dreading her future, fretting and pacing.

Chuck had surprised her with the ring. He and Martin had gotten up early and managed to get a local jeweler to open up well ahead of normal hours. Sarah looked down at her hand and thrilled anew at the sight it.

"It's beautiful, Sarah." Julie had walked up. Chuck had left the store room—which was now the makeshift armory—and gone to consult with Martin about the comms. Sarah fought back her urge to express her full happiness. She did not want to parade it in front of Julie.

Julie put out her hand and Sarah put hers in it, so that Julie could see the ring. "I saw the end of things out by the desk," Julie reported, smiling with only a hint of effort, "and I take it that the essential question had already been asked and answered?"

"Yes, it had. I asked Chuck and he accepted in Paris." A look crossed Julie's face. Sarah continued: "I think we've been together…really together…since we first met at that desk. But for all sorts of reasons, we denied it, even to ourselves—me, more than Chuck, I guess, or at least for longer. I fought against falling for him, against revealing that I had fallen for him, for a long time. He confused me."

Julie's look became one of empathy. "I know something about fighting against falling for Chuck." Julie stopped herself. "But all that is water under the bridge."

Sarah changed the topic. "What do you know about your dad and Chuck's dad—about their connection?"

Jill pursed her lips. "I didn't know anything about it until Dad found the pictures of Chuck and me. Then I only knew Dad hated Stephen. Dad's never really talked about it explicitly, but I've put some of the pieces together—guesswork, though."

"Stephen and my dad were graduate classmates at Cal Tech. For a long time, they were friends but also rivals, the two top students in computer engineering. But Stephen was better than Dad. At first, it rankled Dad, but then it created serious envy. I guess Dad managed to hide the fact that the friendship had darkened from Stephen, or Stephen just didn't notice.

"Later, they took different paths—Dad into the private sector, Stephen into academia. But they stayed in touch for a long time—years past Stephen's marriage to Frost and the births of Ellie and Chuck. At some point, there was a final break—I don't know all that happened, but one thing was that Stephen realized that Dad had kept the 'friendship' in place so that he could steal from Stephen—steal ideas. I fear that some of RI's best innovations were really stolen from Stephen. Since then, Dad's hatred of Stephen has been constant—and strong enough that he has betrayed it to me from time to time.

I believe much that Dad has done has been part of the rivalry with Stephen—although I can't explain it, Fulcrum and the Ring were somehow part of the rivalry too." Julie was pensive for a moment, then she shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe we won't ever know the whole story. Stephen, I gather, isn't well, and Dad, _ahem_ , let's just say he's a hard case…I wonder if they drove each other a little…crazy?"

Sarah shook her head—she didn't know the answer to that. But the feeling she had had the last couple of days, something she had picked up from Frost, less verbal than postural, that there was something foreordained in current events, ticked up a notch or two. _Character is fate_ : Sarah had heard that somewhere. She'd remembered it because she had liked the idea that fate is _in us_ , ours, not outside us, an alien force. Maybe that was part of the story for her and Chuck too. Their characters had brought them together—but also made the path to that togetherness long and windy and uphill.

Julie had released Sarah's hand as she answered the question about Stephen and her dad. She gestured at Sarah's hand. "Did you ever think about that sort of thing when you were little? Daydream about getting married—who your husband might be?"

It took Sarah a moment to answer. "Not really. My parents' marriage was so unhappy, and made me so unhappy, that I pushed the whole idea from my mind. I never had friends, so of course, I never had friends whose parents didn't make each other miserable.

"I never saw a real, functional couple, until I came here and spent time with Ellie and Devon. They were under cover here, so I didn't know everything about them, all that was real about them, but there was no mistaking the love they felt for each other. That was real. They made—they make—each other happy, not miserable.

"And seeing them with Chuck—not a normal family but a real one—seeing all that made me realize how much I had wanted those things even as a child, but I had told myself I couldn't have them. Like the fox in the fable, I decided the unattainable grapes were too sour, that I didn't want them anyway…Being a spy helped me keep telling myself that story."

Carina walked in at that moment and overheard. "Yeah, Walker used to be a great spy. Before Chuckles broke her. Now he's got a ring on her. Soon, he'll have her _barefoot_ —and they'll be working on the _pregnant_."

Julie tried to muffle the shock in her expression. She looked from Carina to Sarah to gauge Sarah's reaction. But Sarah smiled indulgently at Carina and waved the comment off with her newly ringed hand. "So _not work_."

Julie blushed—Carina noticed it. "Oh, right, I forgot I'm in a room with Burbank Boy's entire horizontal history."

Sarah, attempting to alleviate Julie's discomfort (and her own), smirked at Carina, redirecting attention toward Carina. "I know a third who would've gladly reclined for the pleasure of joining that history."

Carina gaped at Sarah and Julie, pointing at herself as she did so. "Who, me? Purely professional, I promise."

"Right," Sarah said, her smirk intensifying, "the world's oldest profession…"

Carina narrowed her eyes dramatically, but she smiled. "You do realize I am carrying a gun?"

Sarah ignored the pretended threat and looked at Julie. "Another fox who doesn't want the high grapes…"

Chuck entered the storeroom. Carina looked him up and down, before settling her gaze just below his midsection. She sent Sarah's smirk back at her. "Well…He is awfully _tall_."

Sarah shook her head; Chuck ducked back out of the room.

}o{

 _WwwweeeeewerrrWeeeewwerrr…_

}o{

Chuck and Sarah together burst through the R&D doors.

Sarah had her tranq gun out.

The doors opened into a long room, divided by glass partitions with glass doors. On the far end of the room, huddled together in a corner, were four people, three men and one woman, all in white lab coats. On the near end of the room were two security guards, both with body armor on, both with pistols raised.

"Drop, Chuck!" Sarah yelled just before the guards opened fire. Chuck used his momentum to fling himself headlong onto the polished floor. He slid behind a set of lockers near the door. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Sarah snap off a shot as she dove beneath a table. Chuck scrambled to his knees and looked around the end of the lockers. One guard had taken a tranq to the leg and was sinking to the floor.

The other guard, given his placement and Sarah's, was not an available target for her—but, on the flip side, she was not an available target for him. He fired at Chuck instead, and Chuck whipped his head back behind the lockers. He'd been in enough tight situations with Sarah to know she'd be working herself into a position from which she could get a shot off; she would not remain on the defensive—it was not her way.

Chuck gave her a count of three, and then, trusting his wife-to-be, he leaped from behind the lockers and scrambled toward the table Sarah had hidden beneath. The security guard fired at Chuck, grazing his shoulder. Chuck choked back a cry so as not to distract Sarah. As he expected, she had gotten into an offensive position: she sprang up and fired and the guard sank to join the other on the floor.

Sarah flashed her eyes on his, blue sirens. "Never do that again, sweetie. Or I will tranq you too." She smiled at him, although he could tell she really was annoyed. She checked his shoulder. "Just a scratch." Then she whispered in his ear. "Later, I'll kiss you and make it better."

The group of lab-coated people on the far end of the room squeezed more tightly together. Both Chuck and Sarah holstered their pistols and held up their hands for a second. Chuck spoke: "We're not here for any of you, just the Intersect tech."

The group relaxed. Chuck headed toward them, or rather toward the bank of computers against the back walls of the lab—against which the group had huddled. The woman and one of the men stepped forward, half-heartedly holding their hands up.

Chuck smiled at them, hoping to put them at ease. Sarah started toward them and Chuck followed. As he got closer, Chuck shifted his gaze from the two who had stepped forward to the two men who were…still…lagging behind. Those laggards were not watching Sarah, not watching Chuck; they were watching the two who stepped forward. Suddenly, Chuck knew. He looked at the raised arm of the woman. There was a recent scar, still quite red, on the inside of her forearm.

"Sarah—they're Intersects!" Chuck cried, pulling his pistol.

Sarah had evidently figured it out just a split second after Chuck. The man had a knife in his side that Chuck never saw Sarah throw—it looked like it mushroomed out of the man's side. The woman had put her hand behind her back. She was going for her weapon. Luckily, the lab coat was not just camouflage, it was also encumbrance. It took her a beat too long to get the weapon out. Chuck fired a shot and the tranq dart lodged in her shoulder. She reached up and pulled it out, throwing it to the floor.

The man pulled Sarah's blade from his side and with a speed that rivaled hers, threw it back at her. Sarah ducked in time. The blade struck the glass partition behind her before clattering to the floor. Chuck fired at the man but missed.

The woman had gotten her gun out in the meantime and she pointed it at Chuck's head. "Stop right there! Another move and I shoot."

Sarah dropped her hand from the bandolier of knives. Chuck knew she wouldn't risk him. Also, it was unclear just how much damage these Intersects could take. The woman should have been down for the count from the tranquilizer, but she seemed as if nothing had happened. The man's side was bleeding, soaking his shirt beneath the lab coat, but he ignored the wound, and showed no sign of being affected.

Chuck bent down and put his tranq gun on the floor. The woman watched him, but she flicked her eyes toward Sarah as he released the gun. Chuck claimed the moment: he sprang toward her, his power and length underestimated by the woman. The rammed her legs with his shoulder, a block below the waist in football—and he heard a pop, a snap. He felt no pain, so he took the sound to have come from one of her legs. She gasped. The woman went down, hard, with Chuck landing on top of her. He heard her grunt in pain.

Chuck rose up far enough to swing a punch and hit her in the face. She twisted underneath him. She got free. She was trying to get up but the knee of one leg was not cooperating. Chuck bear-crawled across the floor to his pistol. Grabbing it, he rolled over and fired into her again—and again. Finally, in frighteningly slow motion, she collapsed.

}o{

The man closed on Sarah. He attacked with viper speed. Sarah's great advantage in hand-to-hand combat, even against men much heavier than she, was her speed. She was always faster than them. But not now—or if she was faster, it was by mere milliseconds. It was not enough of an advantage to make up for the man's advantages.

He bore down on her, punching and kicking with skill, potentially deadly accuracy, and it was all she could do to parry the blows. But the parrying was costing her, costing her both energy and pain. The man, aided by the implant, was not only fast, he was preternaturally strong. Each blow shuddered through Sarah's entire body. She was racked with pain. Her arms were growing heavy. She was tiring, hurting—losing. He landed a blow to her head, glancing but dizzying. Then he got in a jab to her jaw. Off-balance, she stumbled. He gathered himself for the kill.

}o{

Chuck aimed and squeezed off shots. He had a couple of darts left. He hit the man both times. Amazingly, the man did not fall. But he slowed, his strength diminished. He began to lose focus. Sarah was able to summon one last kick, and she landed it on the nose—the man's nose. His head snapped back; he slumped down, collapsing to the floor in slow stages: knees, hands, face. Sarah bent over, gasping for air. Blood ran from her mouth onto the white lab floor. Wiping her mouth on her arm, she stood back up. She was breathing better, steadier.

Sarah motioned with her now-drawn tranq pistol for the two lab-coated men who remained standing to move away from the computers. They did. Meekly.

"God, Sarah," Chuck burst out, "Roark is going to create a legion of assassins like that?"

Martin came over the comms. "One of Casey's men is down. Wounded, not dead. But they can't keep security occupied much longer. What's happening down there, Chuck?"

"I'm putting thermite charges in place now," Chuck answered as he did so. Sarah turned a fierce gaze on the scientists. "Tell us about this place. Now!"

One spoke stammering. "This…This is the research…the research area for the Intersect technology. We've been working on the project for a long time."

"Where are the implants kept—before they are implanted?" The man answered by nodding toward the lockers by the door. "And how many Intersects are there down here?"

"I'm not certain. At least two more. Only Roark knows for sure."

Chuck was finishing placing the charges. "Hey, buddy, these look air-gapped. Are they?" The man nodded. "Yes, and we are searched when we leave, so that the tech cannot be leaked." Chuck scratched his head. "But how will the info get to the other locations Roark is developing?"

"He will carry it himself. He's a big believer in 'Do it Yourself'," the man made no attempt to conceal a sneer. "He downloaded everything earlier this evening."

Sarah jumped in. "Is he still here?"

The man shrugged, then answered. "I think so. Tomorrow was supposed to be the big day. Implantation on a large-scale. Chuck quickly jogged to the lockers. He opened them and found the one with the tech. He scooped them all into his backpack. Jogging back, he piled the tech beneath one of the thermite charges he had affixed to the bank of computers but near the floor.

Sarah watched Chuck while keeping her gun trained on the men. When he finished, she looked at them and then shot each. She grabbed one, and Chuck grabbed the other, and they drug them to the other end of the long room. Chuck went back and shut the glass doors of each partition.

"They'll be safe here. We will too. The successive partitions are will contain the heat." He took a detonator out of his pocket and looked at Sarah. She nodded, almost imperceptibly. They both closed their eyes and he pushed the button.

A few seconds later they opened their eyes. The bank of computers was melting, glowing white hot. The metal from the computer lava-ed down onto the tech, and it began to melt too. In a couple of minutes, it was all destroyed, the computer bank and the tech. "That leaves Roark's copy. C'mon." Chuck hit his comm. "R&D melted. Heading to the bottom floor, after Roark. What's happening?"

"Casey launched a counteroffensive. He and his men have taken out most of the security guards. I don't think they'll be a problem for you now. But Casey's team will be tied up on the surface for a while longer. It'll be a while before they can make it down there." Chuck could hear the admiration in Martin's voice.

"Right. Mom and Carina?"

"No word, yet."

"Martin, Roark must have a way out of here other than the ones we know. Check the data again on everything subterranean nearby. Sarah and I took out two Intersects.

We've missed something. Roark is not going to trap himself down here, I don't care how arrogant he is or how confident of the Intersects. He's got to have a way out."

"The Old Man of the Mountain holed up in his fortress, Alamut, and withstood sieges, Chuck, maybe Roark thinks he can do the same, since he seems to think he's the new Old Man…"

"Maybe. We'll see. Check, buddy. Hurry. And let me know about Frost—Mom—and Carina."

As he finished, he followed Sarah into the hallway and through the door marked '2'. They went down. They entered the door at the bottom of the stairs and found themselves in another long hallway. On one end was a door: _Medical_. On the other, a door marked '3'. As much as Chuck wanted to check on his mom, that was not the plan. They ran to the door marked '3' and into the stairwell, down, down to the door to the third, Roark's private floor.

When they had fought with the guards and then the Intersects, Chuck had blocked out the siren, but as he ran down the stairs, it climbed back into his ears and began battering-ramming at his consciousness.

}o{

 _WwwweeeeewerrrWeeeewwerrr…_

}o{

Sarah stopped in front of the door to gather herself, catch her breath. She put her tranq gun away and pulled her regular pistol. She looked at Chuck. He nodded. She wanted to finish this. He had his tranq pistol. He used the pause to reload it. She knew they were both exhausted and hurting, but they could not stop now.

As she stepped through the door, Sarah noticed two things. First, the siren was not blaring on this floor, it was muted, distant—although there were red lights flashing in the hallway. Second, the hallway was carpeted. Deep, rich merlot carpet, shag, like in shows about the 1970s. After the siren din and the battle above, the sedate hallway seemed incongruous, a hallway in a well-kept but sadly out-of-date hotel. The hallway had two shut doors along the one side, spaced evenly, and a third door that ended it.

Chuck behind her, she crept slowly toward the first door. As she got closer, she noticed that it was not quite closed. Pushed-to, not closed, not latched. She put her back against the hallway wall and reached to the door. She gave it a push and it opened. Chuck, also pressed against the wall, dropped his eyebrows in curiosity. Sarah waited. The muted siren sounded, but other than that, she heard nothing. Gun up, she spun from the wall into the open doorway.

Through the partially open door, Sarah saw what looked like a large, spacious bedroom. She could see the corner of the bed, apparently unmade, given the rumpled state of the bedclothes, and she could see two hands, female, the fingernails painted candy-apple. The hands were empty and motionless.

After Chuck took up a position behind her, Sarah pushed the door open the rest of the way and they entered the room. The hands were attached to arms, attached to shoulders, attached to the naked body of a young woman. She was on her stomach, her long auburn hair draped across her face, her back and the bed, its color intensified in contrast to her pale skin and the white bedsheets. Sarah glanced over her shoulder to see Chuck staring hard. She huffed at him silently, and he whispered—"Sorry, really not what I expected to see."

As if answering their unspoken question, the woman moved at the sound of Chuck's whisper. Alive. She lifted her head, her eyes green glass, thick, drugged. "Ssstthat you, Teddddy-boy? Got unnuther…round in tha chamber?...But ifff ya wanna do that…one thing…thatsss gonna cosstt exxtraaa…" Then her head fell, face-forward, back on the bed.

Sarah scanned the room. The floor was littered with the woman's clothes and shoes and underwear. But Sarah could see no one else's clothes. On the nightstand was a bottle of Malbec wine, open and almost empty, and two glasses. And a used syringe.

Chuck had walked to the closet and opened it. Sarah peeked in too. It was cavernous, and full of expensive men's clothes. The bulk of the clothes repeated—a navy blue suit, white shirt, garnet tie, brown Italian dress shoes. There were maybe twelve complete outfits all the same.

The bathroom was also spacious. The air was slightly damp, moist. Water beads dotted the palatial shower doors. Someone had showered not too long ago. A woman's purse was on the counter by the sink. Sarah opened it and looked in to be sure there was no weapon. When Sarah left the bathroom, she found Chuck spreading a blanket over the woman. The woman seemed to welcome the warmth and snuggled down.

As they left the room, Sarah shot Chuck a questioning glance. "What?" he whispered, "I couldn't just leave her there like that—all uncovered." Sarah popped up on her toes and pecked Chuck's cheek.

"I love you," she told him quietly.

They reached the next door. It was shut. The door was unlocked, however. They entered carefully. It was a workout room. There were several lifting machines, various free weights. A section of the floor was covered by a crimson mat. A punching bag hung in one corner.

Other than the room's existing where it did, it seemed unremarkable—except for the fact that the walls were entirely covered, side-to-side, top-to-bottom, in mirrors. Each side of the room reflected the other side of the room reflecting the other side of the room reflecting the other side of the room reflecting the other side of the room and on and on infinitely.

"Wow," Chuck said, near to Sarah's ear, "you'd have to like yourself a lot to work out in here. I don't like seeing one of me in the mirror, much less me-to-infinity. It'd take a lot of ego to fill these vast mirrored spaces…'The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me'…"

Sarah smiled thinly but whispered back, "No time to wax philosophical, Chuck, let's go." She felt a tremor pass through her. "This room's damn creepy."

They found themselves facing the door that ended the hallway. Sarah joined Chuck in taking a deep breath and she opened it.

}o{

 _Spy-fi_. The room they entered was spy-fi. Espionage science fiction. It made Castle look like a mall arcade.

Huge, huge—that was the first impression. A video monitor the size of Detroit covered the far wall. On it was displayed the RI logo—but then it changed, and Chuck and Sarah could see themselves on it. Computers covered the other walls, with a monitor and workstation here and there. The computing power in that room was enough to run entire countries. All of it beyond vanguard, way ahead of state-of-the-art. The tech nerd in Chuck wanted to shout and run to a keyboard. It was Tech Fantasia. But the agent in him kept him silent.

In the center of the room, at a desk large enough to serve the Last Supper, sat Ted Roark. He was flanked by a large woman on one side and a thin man on the other. Each had a submachine gun—Sarah recognized the HK MP5Ks. Bad news. Even worse, the woman's short sleeves showed a scar on her inner forearm. Intersect. If she was an Intersect, so, Sarah reasoned, was the man. _Damn_. They'd just walked into this—but what else could they really have done? There was no time. Maybe Mary and Carina…

"Well, as I live and breathe, if it isn't little Chucky Carmichael and the infamous Sarah Walker. Amazing! Really, what are the odds of us meeting down here, like this?" Roark's disturbingly cherubic face smiled. "No, really, Chucky, what are the odds?" The smile vanished. Roark used the middle finger of his right hand to push up his rimless glasses.

Chuck just looked at Roark. Roark looked back. "You know, Chucky, you look like your dad. Too bad. You'd have been so much better off if you looked like your mom. Back in the day, wow! what a looker! Still MILFy though, am I right? But then again, Stephen was always a lucky one…well, you know, until he wasn't. So, what brings you two to my little underground hideaway?" His smile was oily beneath his balding head. When neither of them answered, his smile slid off his face.

"Oh, right, right, I am forgetting my storytellers' protocol: this is the part where the bad guy," Roark stood up, his slight paunch making the predictable navy-blue suit look less expensive, "that's me, tells the good guys, that's you, about his complicated, nefarious plan. _Buuuut_ …" he paused after stretching the word almost to breaking, "I am really tempted to shit on the protocol and shoot you two. 'Bullets, Not Words'—that's what would be on my villain's placard." He paused again, his hand near his mouth, his index finger across his lips, tapping them thoughtfully.

"Still, protocol is protocol, and I would hate to break it this near the end of our—rather, of your—tale." He tried to button his jacket, but it wouldn't close. He quit trying. "So, let me give you the abbreviated version. _The CliffsNotes_ —that'll do. Protocol is kept, and you two will die soon enough. Besides, I some of it I want to tell you both." He chuckled dryly to himself, obviously finding the moment theatrical, enjoying it—and unable to keep himself from overacting.

"You see, it all began when I chose to be born…No, no, just joking. Well, maybe not, but we don't have time for the full and glorious and world-historical autobiography. So, let me start again.

"It all began with two young men, one of whom thought they were friends, the other of whom knew they were bitter enemies. You see, Chucky," Roark glanced at Chuck with dead-fish eyes, all merriment vanished, "I _hate_ your father. Hate, Chucky. Not dislike. Not just envy. Hate. Burning, soul-consuming, reach down his throat and pull out his living heart and beat his dying face with it, _hate_. I hate Stephen Carmichael.

"This story is a story about the two of us. What's the line? 'The fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children's teeth are set on edge"? Isn't that it?" He paused, the evil merriment returning. "I hate him for the simple reason that I am the best—and he made other people doubt that. They were wrong," his voice shifted pitch oddly, "but they doubted. I was patient, though. I knew I would revenge myself on him for all the pairwise comparisons I lost.

"After Stephen married Mary, he began to suffer torment. He was terrified by her past, her present, her questionable future. He came to me, his _friend_ , and he confessed to me what your mother did, does, for a living. I saw a chance to deepen his torment. I convinced him to get involved in your mother's work. Of course, I had no idea at the time he would be so amazingly good at it, but I did know how amazingly bad it would be for him. He has such a big, soft heart." Roark pretended to wipe his eyes with his fists. "Hearing about your mother's work, really understanding it, started to kill him, little by little. Her file, so to speak, was a dead weight on his big, soft heart. Pressuring it, squashing it. He would come to me to try to talk it through, to ask if maybe he shouldn't stop trying to help. I encouraged him to keep at it, do more, played on his fears—and there were so many to play on.

"It took time, but he began to fall apart. That is when I delivered the crowning blow. He needed help, some way of coping. I suggested that he look into the CIA's MK-Ultra trials. He became interested, fascinated, finally desperate, and then I supplied him with the drugs he believed would allow him to cope with Mary's work and keep her safe. He could never have found them, much less paid for them. I expected the drugs to make him crazy quickly, but although your father's heart is soft, his head is hard. He managed to hold it together as the doses I supplied increased in strength and destructiveness. But the drug did finally break him.

"Unfortunately, it didn't kill him, and it didn't completely incapacitate him—in a weird way, it enabled a part of him. Enough of him remained for him to become the implacable foe of my most cherished project, the Ring, and my Legion of Assassins. Intersects."

"Do you appreciate the irony here, Chucky? In revenging myself on your father, I created my own greatest foe. It's a villain origin story told in reverse—right? In the comic books, doesn't the hero do something that creates the villain? But our story is _bass-ackwards_. I created the hero.

'So, we ended up spending years playing real-world chess against each other—at least, I knew it was real. Stephen, I reckon, not so much. But the pieces on the board were people, the pieces we took off it, bodies, even if he didn't understand. I couldn't find him to kill him. He couldn't get to me to stop me, because I was ringed about," he smiled, "with wealth and influence and with political allies. But at long last, I have driven him out of his hole and he has driven me into mine. The game is about to end." He stopped. He had ranted himself breathless for a moment.

Chuck felt hate boiling in his heart—but he refused to give in to it. Roark was trying to provoke it, trying to get Chuck to attack him, so that one or both of the Intersects could kill him.

"Here's what I don't get, _Teddy_ ," Chuck interposed into the silence, changing the subject, "how are you going to get these Intersects to do what you want? Loyalty is one thing, fanaticism is another."

"True, true, Chucky. Of course, some of my volunteers are fanatics, but not nearly all. Not enough. We need a better school for fanatics. The Middle East is too far away and it takes too long.

For a time, I tried to find some way to build a compulsion into the implant tech, but we could never figure out how to do it. But then your father came to my rescue, in a way. A version of the drugs I gave him does what I need to be done. I will give to my new Intersects while the implantation occurs. I will then 'process' them while under its influence, implanting a psychological imperative along with the physical tech. I did not do that with my first Intersects," he waved his hands at the two flanking him, "but I will with these new ones. They will be remorselessly psychologically tormented if they cease their mission. The drug that created my foe will create my servile versions of my foe, my vicious little Stephens. Oh, how the irony ironizes itself!"

"Good Lord," Chuck commented, his voice low, intense, "you _are_ a comic book villain. And a fucking loon."

Roark's face reddened. "I am going to be a player on the world's stage, Daddy's-boy. I am going to influence all that happens, like the moon over the tides. I may not rule the world—no one can rule the world—but I can matter to it in a way that no one else does. Maybe this group of 'volunteers' won't pan out. I gather things on the surface aren't going my way. But I have other facilities, I have the programming and the specs. All you have done is delay the inevitable.

"Speaking of the inevitable, it's time for us to part company. I would love to chat more—really, I would. But I have appointments with destiny.

"Although, I admit, I'd particularly like to know how it's working out for you, Chucky, walking in your father's romantic footsteps? Do you think you can really be with her," he nodded toward Sarah, "and keep yourself whole, Chucky? She's Frost 2.0. She'll kill you or kill your heart, one or the other, no doubt about it.

"How do I know you're a couple—well, there's her ring, and that ridiculous twist tie on your finger. But it's obvious, even here, now, that you two are a couple. Did anyone, other than the two of you, ever doubt it? I mean really…"

Sarah's jaw clenched. "Tell us about Graham and Ryker, what's their story?" She made her tone deliberately authoritative, challenging.

Roark took the bait, rose to her challenge. He really didn't want to stop talking. "Oh, Graham. He was easy. I found out about his taste for the tables and I slowly—have I told you I am patient?—worked him up into greater and greater gambling stakes. He would have eventually been mine—the Ring's. But he surprised me. He actually identified a few of my Ring Elders. And, more interesting to me, he finally figured out where Stephen was being hidden. Poor Graham," Roark laughed heartily, "he thought he controlled the whole board at last—but he wasn't ever a player.

"He thought he was positioned to move against me or against the government, Castle, itself—that he could, if necessary, play us against each other. I couldn't let him keep the information about the Ring, and I couldn't let him keep Castle from me, so I sent Ryker. Ryker had been working for me, off the books, so to speak, for a few months. He'd spent years trying to buy a seat at the Elders' table. I knew I could find a use for a man with his skill set and ambitions.

"I told him I would make him an Elder if he did a job for me. He set up a meet with Graham, tortured the poor son of a bitch until he gave up Castle, and then…"—Roark snapped his fingers— "shot him in the head. I was going to set Ryker up in Europe, put him behind my daughter's throne, so to speak. i rigged the vote at the meeting. Just to make sure Julie did as Daddy wanted.

Roark looked at Sarah for a moment, allowing his gaze to drift up and down her in cool assessment. "Such a shame Graham had you and I didn't; I really did want to recruit you—not just for Fulcrum, but for the Ring, for me. You are _the_ assassin."

Roark's tone became rhapsodic. "You are Death's true _artist_ , Agent Walker. I put up with that cretin, Larkin, let him touch my daughter, for a variety of reasons, but mostly in hope of getting to you eventually.

"Look at what Graham made you! I could have made you so much _more_ —a creature fit to walk seamlessly into a Hieronymus Bosch painting. Oh, the places we could have gone! Oh, the people we could have killed!"

"Geez," Chuck remarked, shaking his head, "I don't know what's worse, the devil quoting Scripture, or the villain misquoting Seuss.

Roark deflated a little. He turned to the woman. "Gretchen, I'm going to go. Kill them when I am gone. I can watch later on my laptop. Virtual reality's as good as reality, you know." The large woman nodded her head. Roark punched a few buttons on his desk. One end of the giant monitor swung outward.

"Chuck!" It was Martin, in Chuck's ear. "There's an old, abandoned subway tunnel near you. Roark could have dug his way to it. It is so old it isn't represented on the new LA Metro Rail maps. I had to go back to almost original plans. If he's got an escape route, that's it."

Roark picked up his briefcase and waved at Chuck and Sarah. He turned to the monitor just as the door to the room burst open and Frost and Carina barreled in.

"Chuck, Sarah, get down!" Chuck heard his mom yell. A pistol rang out. Then there was a burst of machine-gun fire.

* * *

 **A/N2** Hey, everybody, heads on the swivel! Chapter 36,"Heartcore", is coming your way. May take a few days. Be sure to tune in! There'll be balloons, cake, clowns...just kidding.

Leave a review, please. I'm tickled pink when you do!


	36. Chapter 36: Heartcore

**A/N1** All good things come to an end, or so it is said.

Perhaps.

But this story _is_ ending.

Thank you for reading and for reviewing! _Thank you, thank you_!

I'll add some parting comments after the story.

Another Land of Talk song title as my chapter title. Give it a listen. I have compiled a soundtrack of sorts on my Tumbler, _fragmentsofruin_.

Don't own Chuck.

* * *

 **Turned Tables**

 _Land of Talk Mission_

* * *

Sunday, March 2, 2008  
Roark Industries  
12:37 am

* * *

CHAPTER 36 Heartcore

* * *

Sarah dove to the floor, the rough concrete scraping her elbows. She had turned her head toward the door, and she saw Frost raise her gun and fire, even as Frost leaped to the side. Carina dropped immediately. Sarah saw bits of stone explode from the wall as she heard the machine-gun blast.

Then there was an eerie split second of silence. Sarah heard Roark cry out in pain. And then the fight really began.

Frost scrambled across the floor, chased by another blast from Gretchen's submachine gun. Just in time, she managed to wedge herself into a small opening between the wall and a computing tower. Sarah got her pistol up and fired at Gretchen, trying at least to distract her from Frost. Gretchen had crouched behind Roark's massive desk. Sarah's shot thudded into desk. Frost used the second Sarah bought her to squeeze more of herself behind the computer.

Sarah heard Roark emit a stream of curses. Frost had hit him. _Hell of a shot_. Sarah had managed to get into a spot similar to Frost's, although there was more room where Sarah was, and better cover. Chuck had rolled behind the heavy leather sofa that faced Roark's desk, and neither Gretchen nor the male Intersect could get a shot off at him without standing up, and neither was in a hurry to do that, since they would be exposed to the room. Intersects were not bulletproof.

"Hans, _you stupid bastard,_ help me!" Roark screamed at the male Intersect.

Gretchen rose up enough to offer cover fire, and Sarah knew Hans was scurrying to Roark. Hans stayed low enough that Sarah almost certainly couldn't hit him. She decided not to waste a shot. Roark was moaning loudly—evidently, Hans was dragging him toward the desk. _Good—not toward the secret escape tunnel_. _We need to end this here_.

Gretchen rose and fired again. Carina had hidden behind a free-standing work station, more or less between where Chuck was and where Frost was. She stood to fire at Gretchen at the moment Hans finished dragging Roark. Hans fired and Carina went down.

 _Carina!_ Sarah screamed silently, as she watched her friend groan, sag, collapse, and lean limply against the bottom of the workstation. Sarah's eyes met Chuck's and they shared their terror.

"Give up." It was Roark. His voice rose from the floor behind the desk. "You have us outnumbered, but we have you outgunned. And these are _Intersects_ , not mere Ring agents. This will not go your way, Chucky. Give up—save your women. We've already taken one. Are you willing to hazard Frost or Walker, I mean are you, really?"

Before Sarah could cry out or gesture, Chuck stood, and tossed his tranq pistol on the couch. "I yield, Teddy. Please let them go. You can take your Intersects, and your briefcase of evil, and get the hell out of Burbank. Just let them go."

"I will, I will. Tell them to lay down their arms—you know, drop their guns." Chuck looked at Sarah, his eyes pleading, but there was also a glint of something in them. Chuck had a plan. That actually scared Sarah even more, because he was fully willing, she knew, to die for her.

She glanced at Frost and saw Frost toss her gun out from her hiding place. Sarah took a deep breath and threw hers out too.

Hans reported the events to Roark. Roark ordered: "Okay. Okay. Um, Agent Walker, knives too, please, and the tranq gun." It took a moment, but Sarah complied, although she did not throw out the knives that were strapped to her calf, beneath her pants leg. Chuck might have a plan—but she'd keep him alive if it killed her. Chuck would get out of here alive.

Frost stepped out, her hands up. Sarah followed suit.

As she stepped out, she saw one of Carina's fingers—her thumb—move slightly, a subtle thumbs-up. She should have known: Carina would die hard, or not at all. As far as Sarah knew, no one else in the room saw the gesture. Carina's gun was not in her hand but it was near it. Carefully keeping her eyes from straying back to Carina, Sarah stepped forward again, making Hans keep his focus on her. Gretchen was cautiously eyeing Frost, who mimicked Sarah in stepping forward another step.

Roark pulled himself up by clambering up his desk chair like a ladder. It kept trying to roll away from him, and had the situation not been so awful, the whole spectacle would have struck Sarah as a bad comedy skit.

Roark finally got himself into the chair, using only one arm, and doing his best to keep his shoulder from brushing against anything. As he got himself seated, Sarah could finally determine that Frost's shot had hit Roark in the shoulder. The fabric of his navy-blue coat was torn there and all around the tear the fabric had started to look dark brownish, as the red of his blood mixed with the navy-blue of the suit. He was in real pain—but Sarah's field medic opinion was that the placement of the wound meant is was, unfortunately, not mortal. Bastard's going to live.

Roark noticed her looking at him and he forced a smile to stretch his hell's-cherub face. "You can't get rid of _destiny_ so easily, Agent Walker," he paused to groan as he tried to sit back, "as you should know.

"You were destined to be a killer, gifted to kill. No matter what you may believe," Roark smiled smugly as his eyes shifted to Chuck and then back to her, "or hope, if you keep that ring, all you will do is douse it in blood. Consider your life. What woman destined for anything else could have lived your life—gotten to this room, still alive, after all those missions? The Farm didn't change you, Agent Walker, it freed you to live according to your real nature.

"Look at me, Agent Walker, see me for who I am. The Old Man of the Mountain made new—now, don't laugh, I am not Shirley MacLaine, waving crystals around and claiming to have lived previous lives—and shit. I've gotten here by muscle, not mysticism. Although, I did like that movie, you know, the one with her and Clint Eastwood… _Two Mules for Sister Sara_. Ha! Sara—Sarah. Maybe that's why it came to mind. Remember, she was a prostitute pretending to be a nun. _Does that kind of sound familiar,_ Agent Walker?

"Anyway…see me for who I am. I am the man you were destined to find, the one man who knows how to get the most out of you, out of your unique gifts.

"Look at me, Sarah, _not at Chucky_. He's one mule for Sister Sarah. Maybe Frost is the other… _Look at me_ ," Sarah realized that although Roark likely wouldn't die from his wound, blood loss and pain were making him…crazier, if that were possible, "look at _me_ , Sarah.

" _I am the spy life_. The life you have lived for more than a decade began on the mountain centuries ago with the Old Man.

"Maybe he didn't invent spying or assassination, but he perfected them—even better, he _incorporated_ them, turned them into big business, setting the course for the CIA, the NSA, the KGB, whatever GD acronym you like. Graham used the Old Man's work as a template when creating you, I'm sure of it," he watched Sarah's face and finally smiled a real smile, "…Aha, he did! You have discovered so. I knew it. And I see it in your face!

"It has all been leading you _here._ Step to this side of the desk, Agent Walker, and _become what you are_. Become your unattained but attainable self. Join me, _assassin_. Look at me. _Join me._ "

Roark's voice had become a tenor sing-song, lilting and hypnotic. For a split second, what he was saying ensnarled itself with all of her fears—her past with Graham, the firefight at the abandoned mine, the clown battle, the kills at _Nuit Blanche_ and on the street in Paris—and she wondered if Roark was right, if all she had worked for and hoped for and believed in with Chuck was just a warm, brightly colored fantasy, diverting her momentarily from the only future, the black future, she was destined to live out?

Maybe her future had been set ages ago, by some madman on a mountain, and she was to become the prized killer of his self-appointed heir? Maybe…

And then she heard Chuck chuckle. He chuckled, she knew, not at her or her fears, never that, but at Roark, at his all-encompassing blathering narcissism. "Teddy, _you do not know_ Sarah Walker."

The spell broke. Sarah reoriented. Roark was a dumpy villain with delusions. No more.

Her life was hers.

Chuck continued: "Teddy, I have to say, you are so much smaller than I expected you to be. I don't mean physically—I, uh, I usually don't like to make comments about anyone's _person,_ but you are pudgier than I expected, softer. I guess you must spend all your time in the workout room gazing at your own reflection, not actually doing any exercise."

God, Sarah thought, Chuck's insight into people was truly amazing. Deadly, even, if he wanted to use it that way. Roark winced visibly, his eyes hardened and he actually sucked in his stomach before he rotated to Chuck, and away from Sarah. Chuck's verbal jab had landed hard. Maybe too hard, Sarah suddenly realized, as Roark spoke slowly to Gretchen.

"Ok, Gretchen, he gave himself up for them. So, kill him. He'll buy them a few more minutes. Once he's dead, we'll kill his Mom and his fiancée. Too bad about the redhead, though. She'd have made a nice…hostage."

"Speaking of hostages," a voice rang out from the door, one Sarah had never heard, "I have one that might interest you, Ted."

}o{

Everyone directed eyes to the door. In it stood Julie.

But the voice was a man's voice.

Julie stepped into the room and then Sarah saw Stephen Carmichael emerge from the hallway.

He was wearing a hospital gown as a shirt, but he had on an ill-fitting pair of jeans underneath it, and an oversized, battered pair of low-top red Chucks on his feet.

He was unshaven. His eyes were slightly wild. Julie looked genuinely afraid.

Stephen reached back with one hand—in the other he held a pistol, trained on Julie's back—and dragged Ilsa into the room by an arm. He pushed her off to the side.

For a long moment, Stephen looked at Chuck. Sarah could tell that he became momentarily unsteady; Stephen's eyes clouded. But then they cleared, and he looked on Roark. Fury glutted his eyes.

"Thirty-some hours on I-70 West, just to see you face-to-face, Ted. Leave Agent Walker, leave Sarah, alone. She's one of the good guys—she always has been, even if she sometimes didn't know it. It's hard to tell your hat is white if everyone keeps you in the dark. The same with your heart." He gave Sarah a quick, pointed grin. Then he pinned his gaze back to Roark.

"If you want to talk about destiny, Ted, let's talk about _us_. This is between us—and it always has been. It's about your ever-expanding ego and its pickled shadow, your envy…"

Stephen trailed off and Sarah began to panic. But then he refocused himself, although Sarah saw a tremor travel through him, top to bottom.

"You have my son. I have your daughter. I say we trade. My people leave, your people leave. And then we settle this, finally. After all, I've been quasi-catatonic for years, Ted, and if I heard Chuck right just a moment ago," Stephen smiled at Chuck proudly, and Chuck stood straighter, "you've been working out. Hell, I'm still in my hospital gown. What do you have to fear from me? _Mano e mano_?"

"Stephen. No." Frost commanded.

Stephen glanced at her for a second, his eyes surfeited with sudden feeling. "Mary, my love, I know you did the best for me you could. I can sort of remember those years below ground. But I am not just 'lucid', Mary, I am lucid. Give me this time.

"I'm Rip Van Winkle, awake after all these years. I don't know how long I have. Let me do what I have to do, Mary, just as you have all these years. Ted used to love irony—does he still?" Other than Carina and Ilsa, Julie and everyone else, even Gretchen and Hans, gave exasperated nods.

"Excellent. Because, _ironically_ , his attempt to kill me is what woke me and brought me here. To finish the endgame of this long chess match we've played. I have your queen, Ted. _Check_. What are you going to do?"

Although everyone else, including Chuck, shifted attention to Roark, Sarah kept her eyes on Stephen. He was laboring. His features were schooled, but Sarah could see pain mounting behind them. His breathing was rapid, shallow. He was not going to be able to stay upright for much longer.

Sarah wondered what was happening back on the surface. Where was Casey? Had he and his men gotten past security finally? Were they coming?

Stephen's arrival had shifted things, but it was not clear that it would save them.

They didn't have much time. Stephen was fading. He was looking increasingly greenish. Carina was playing dead—but how long could she do it before she was no longer playing? Sarah could see Carina's blood on the floor.

"Are you asking me to believe you will kill my daughter, an innocent, just like that? Really? No, I mean, really? Go ahead, Stephen, _shoot her_. Kill her. Go on." Roark was beginning to crow, sensing victory.

Carina's hand flashed out and she had her gun. She couldn't stand, but she just let herself slump and it gave her the sightline she needed. She fired. Hans' head snapped back; he timbered to the floor.

Sarah ducked, pulling Gretchen's attention from Chuck and Carina. She was able to free a knife from her calf. Without standing, she hurled it at Gretchen. Sarah's hit her target, Gretchen's upper right shoulder.

Having fought with an Intersect before, Sarah did not expect to incapacitate Gretchen completely, but Gretchen was right-handed, and at least it would make her handling of the submachine gun slower, clumsier—and make it hurt. It worked. Gretchen squeezed off a burst but it went wide of Sarah, and caused a shower of sparks and electronic whines from the computer tower behind Sarah.

Sarah saw Chuck put his hands on the back of the couch and swing his legs over it. He landed on the couch, bouncing his tranq gun up into the air. He grabbed it out of the air—and fired two darts into Gretchen, and one into Roark. It happened so fast Sarah was still crouched down when it was over.

Gretchen swung the submachine gun at Chuck. She was fading—still, she would kill Chuck before she lost consciousness. But then two more shots rang out, Stephen's gun, and red flowers blossomed on Gretchen's chest. She looked down at herself and then up at Stephen. She fell forward onto Roark's desk.

Roark was somehow still conscious. Chuck jumped up from the couch and ran around the desk, grabbing Roark's briefcase. Roark slowly turned in his chair. Chuck opened the briefcase, swung off his backpack, retrieved another thermite charge and threw it in the briefcase. He then threw the briefcase into the tunnel behind the massive monitor. He grabbed the detonator and punched the button. There was a blinding flash of white light and then the smell of heat and hiss of frying leather.

"What have you done, you _stupid_ son of a bitch. My life's work, my destiny, was in there. The Intersect technology. Power. Power! Raw power. And you just…destroyed it. Do you think the CIA's going to take kindly to that decision? Do you think the US government wouldn't want that?"

Chuck stepped toward Roark deliberately, looming over him. "Teddy, I don't give a shit what the CIA or the government would've wanted me to do with that briefcase. I did what I had to do. I'm done." He looked at Sarah. " _We're_ done. And you're done too."

"I am not done! Do you know how many lawyers I have, how much money, how much influence? What proof do you have of wrongdoing? Julie knows nothing. She proves nothing. The Paris meeting mentioned my name. So what? It proves nothing. Not given my resources. _I am untouchable_.

"You know what the Old Man of the Mountain said as he died? _'Nothing is true; everything is permitted.'_ That's the motto of my life; it's the motto of the spy life, Chucky! You can't touch me."

Chuck said nothing in response. He stepped past Roark to Roark's desk and punched a button. The massive monitor's picture rolled for a moment, and then it showed Chuck and Sarah as they first entered the room. Roark's voice as he welcomed them was clear…

"Thanks, Teddy," Chuck looked back over his shoulder at Roark. "You recorded it all for us. Now, that's irony that even Alanis Morissette would appreciate… _don't cha think_?" Roark forfeited consciousness as Chuck began to sing:

 _Well, life has a funny way of sneaking up on you/_  
 _When you think everything's ok and everything's going right…_

Sarah ran to Chuck, hugging him before he could reach the chorus. Carina mumbled weakly from the floor—"Thank God!".

Frost ran to her and began to check her wounds, calling Martin on the comms. He told her that Casey and three of his men were on their way down. They each had medkits. Ambulances had been dispatched. Beckman had been called.

Julie turned around and put Stephen's arm around her shoulders. She began walking him to the couch. After a few steps, Ilsa grabbed other arm and put it around her shoulders. He thanked them both. After Stephen was seated, Julie went to her father.

Casey came running into the room, his men behind him. They spread out and went to the wounded, friend and foe.

Hans was dead. Gretchen was barely hanging on. Roark was unconscious.

Carina's situation was touch-and-go for a few minutes, but as Sarah said to her, holding her hand while Casey tended to her, Carina was too shameless to die. "Besides, Carina, I've got a friend you need to meet. Her name's Liz. You two will either become buddies—or your meeting will end the universe as we know it."

Medics—real medics—showed up after a few minutes, and soon after cleaner crews, teams to deal with the volunteers and RI personnel still below ground, and NSA agents dispatched by Beckman to handle LEO's and the press.

Everything seemed ok. Frost grabbed Chuck, hugging him fiercely.

And then Stephen collapsed.

The medics rushed him to the hospital with Carina.

As the ambulance pulled away: _WwwweeeeewerrrWeeeewwerrr…_

}o{

When Sarah and Chuck got home, it was nearly dawn. The darkness was lifting. They'd gotten word from Carina's doctor that she would make it. Her wounds were serious: she had an extended hospital stay and then weeks of physical therapy ahead of her. But she would live and likely be nearly as good as new.

Stephen's condition was more unclear. Other than being badly dehydrated and in need of food—he had driven the second car he stole (the first was the intern's) for over thirty hours without really stopping to eat or drink—he was physically fine. He'd evidently found the pants and shoes in a duffle bag in the car (along with half a box of strawberry pop tarts, his only food on the drive).

Predictably, the problem was his psychological condition. The drug Ellie gave him had a remarkable, almost miraculous effect. Stephen not only became lucid, genuinely lucid, but had been able to somehow piece together enough of his past and current situation to allow him to take action. He'd know where he had to go.

Even Frost agreed that during the standoff with Roark the man standing there had been her husband, the father of her children, as she had once known him. But the doctors simply could not predict whether he would ever wake up again, and, if he did, whether he would be the Stephen of Castle or the one at Roark Industries. Frost had called Ellie and shared everything withher—and Ellie had called Devon. They would arrive in LA later in the day.

Frost stayed with Stephen. Martin volunteered to stay with Carina. After a nurse examined the place where the shot grazed Chuck, Chuck and Sarah had been ordered by Frost to go home and get some sleep.

Julie had left in an ambulance with her father. He was in custody despite being unconscious still. She had promised to call them later and let them know how he was doing—and how she was doing.

}o{

They plodded through the door into the apartment. Sarah went to the couch and sat down heavily. Chuck knelt before her and unlaced her black spy shoes, and gently pulled them off her feet. He put them on the coffee table, and then he rolled off her socks, putting them in her shoes. He sat on the floor and took off his. He stood with his in one hand and picked up hers with the other. He walked over to the trash can and dropped them in. He walked to her, helped her up, and, barefoot, they walked to their bedroom.

* * *

March 20, 2008  
Echo Park  
Chuck and Sarah's (Temporary?) Apartment  
3 pm

* * *

Sarah pulled a plastic lounge chair near the fountain and positioned it so that she could hear the water and sit in the sun. She had put on sunscreen everywhere exposed by her tank top and shorts, and made herself an amaretto iced coffee.

She sat down and took a sip of her drink. She wiggled her bare toes. Closing her eyes, she let the sound of the water and the warmth of the sun work on her, savoring the complex, bittersweetness of her drink.

The last few weeks had been complex and bittersweet.

 _A week ago, she and Chuck had an exit interview in DC with Diane Beckman and the CIA's Interim Director, Jocelyn Robeck. The two women started the meeting unhappy._

 _Although they never said so explicitly, it was clear that they were frustrated and disappointed that Roark's best Intersect technology was, in fact, destroyed. Although they had managed to round up some of Roark's research team, it turned out that he had kept them working in isolation from one another, so that no one had the full picture of the tech or how it was supposed to work. Also, key members of the team turned out to be missing. The bodies of a couple were eventually found. But the others never were heard from again._

 _Roark's effort to make sure no one could steal his tech meant no one could easily recreate it._

 _The Intersect tech recovered from Gretchen and Hans, and the other two Intersects Chuck and Sarah fought, turned out to be seriously flawed, technologically behind the tech Chuck had destroyed, the tech that was intended for the 'volunteers'. It gave the NSA and CIA a place to start, but word had spread in the intelligence community that the tech would soon kill the implantee—and so no one was eager to become a guinea pig for further research._

 _The NSA and CIA had a joint team working, but progress, if there was any, was slow. Maybe there would be more Intersects, but it would not be anytime soon._

 _Roark himself was no help. He had lost the will to live. A few days after the raid on RI, he had slipped into a coma. A few days after that, he was gone._

 _As Julie said to them, in a moment of black humor in the midst of her grief, it'd been destiny or bust for her dad._

 _But on top of Beckman and Robeck's frustration and disappointment about the Intersect, the two women were annoyed to find that their increasingly attractive offers to Chuck and Sarah were all firmly refused._

 _"Sarah," Beckman explained, "you are a spy, the best. How can you give that up to do…what?"_

 _Sarah shrugged. "I haven't decided yet, not for sure. But I want to get my teaching certificate. I'd like to teach kindergarten, I think. Luckily, Chuck and I have some money, so we're not in any hurry to make a decision._

 _"Right now, I am spending time helping Frost—and Ellie and Devon—with Stephen. Oh, and helping Carina Miller with her physical therapy. Or, helping Martin help her. But I've had no downtime to speak of in…ages."_

 _Chuck, sitting beside her, told them that he'd picked up a class, teaching at The Clown School in LA—"But no makeup," he had quickly added, causing Sarah to smile indulgently, and confusing Beckman and Robeck. Other than that, he explained, along with Sarah, he'd been spending time with his family, and with Carina and Martin._

 _"So, you really are leaving—both of you?" Beckman finally asked, surrender at last in her tone._

 _"Yes, Diane," Chuck responded. "We've seen the light—the light at the end of the tunnel. We're done. We want a home, a family. We'll muddle through."_

What neither Chuck nor Sarah shared was that, although it was true that Sarah had money squirreled away, a spy's rainy-day fund—kept against a sudden need to run or a sudden need to bail her father out of jail, they were actually living on money that came from Julie Roark.

Julie had put corporate sleuths to work on the books and files at RI, now her company, and they had discovered proof in the files that Roark had, indeed stolen ideas from Chuck's father.

The final settlement would be a huge, large enough that there would never be any need to worry about Stephen or Frost, or, Ellie or Devon, or really about themselves. They would be, not independently wealthy, perhaps, but independently comfortable, surely.

Frost had taken the initial payment and given most of it to Chuck and Sarah as an engagement present—and she had made it clear that a generous portion of the final settlement would be theirs as well.

Sarah took another sip of her iced coffee. Stephen had finally awakened a week or so after the RI raid. He awoke lucid. Then he went back to sleep. When he woke up the next time, he was 'lucid'. Ellie was hopeful that with time and more of the experimental drug, that she might stabilize him in the present. She told them, though, that all the drug might do is keep him having lucid days, and never eliminate the 'lucid' ones. At the moment, he was sometimes present in the present, and sometimes present in the past. But he did not seem unhappy, even on his lucid days. Chuck spent a lot of time with him, no matter whether Stephen was lucid or just 'lucid'. Sarah was quickly becoming very fond of Stephen. So much of Stephen was in Chuck-but there was Frost there too.

Another sip. She picked up the bridal magazine that Ellie had brought over. Sarah wasn't sure she wanted the big traditional wedding, but she did want a wedding, one at which all of her new family and her friends could be present.

She and Chuck still hadn't set a date, but they would soon. They were waiting to hear from Casey and Ilsa. He'd gone back with her to Paris—it turned out Casey had stored up a huge amount of vacation time—and they were giving _them_ a try, testing to see if they could recapture the magic of their earlier days together.

If their behavior around the apartment complex before they left was any indication, the magic was definitely being recapturable. They had been moving slowly, carefully. Casey understood Ilsa's struggle, and he did not push. But when they left, they had been happy. Sarah's spy intuition told her that Paris would cement them together more firmly.

 _"So, tell me, Casey, before you run off to…France…" Casey had grunted at her in response, "did you really believe I was a traitor?"_

 _Casey had looked at her for a minute and then he shook his head. "No, not really. Not after the first few days, anyway. But Carmichael was so in love with you, and you were so in love with him, and both Graham and Beckman were suspicious…So, I told him you were likely a traitor…and I told you that you were compromised, hoping to keep you two apart for long enough for you to be cleared. I had to convince you both…_

 _"I knew that you two would eventually find each other once that obstacle was out of the way. And…If you hadn't, I would've engineered it. Never tell Carmichael I said this, but he is a good spy when his heart is in it—maybe he could even be a great one. But his heart was always with you, Sarah, and yours with him. I'm glad you are both getting out."_

 _"John," Sarah went on, enjoying his wince at her use of his first name, "thank you." He shrugged and went on packing. "What about you two, will you and Ilsa get out?"_

 _He looked pensive. "She will. She plans to resign once we are in Paris. I've got eight weeks of time off. We're going to see some of Europe together. If I come back, it will not be as a field agent. A buddy of mine keeps trying to get me to become a drill sergeant for Marines boot camp in San Diego. I'm giving that serious thought. San Diego is a good town. Ilsa has a friend at UCSD who teaches in their Foreign Languages and Literature Department. She could get some work there_ , _if she comes back with me."_

Sarah shifted in her chair, looking again at the bridal magazine. A gown had caught her eye. Ellie was so excited about the wedding. She was of course helping Sarah plan it. She would be the matron of honor. Carina was to be a bridesmaid. Ilsa too. Sarah had called Jan and Liz and they'd enthusiastically agreed as well—although Liz wanted to know if she would get a chance to toast the couple at the reception, since she thought she might have a thought or two about things to say. That call ended with Jan and Liz singing an impromptu duet of "I'm Getting Married in the Morning". This time, they said, they sang it for real, for an engaged couple.

Circus Maximus was due to be in LA next week. Chuck and Sarah were both excited to see Jan and Liz in person.

One of the sweetest things in the past few weeks had been the reunion with her mother and Molly. They were both well. Molly was clearly thriving and had worked wonders on Sarah's mom. Having a mother again—and a sister—was precious to Sarah. She'd even talked on the phone with her dad, and he had told her he'd come to town to meet Chuck. She knew that there was no telling when he would come. She didn't expect him at the wedding. But she did expect him.

Sarah heard footsteps and looked up. Chuck had gotten out of his car and was walking toward her. He was carrying something. A cheap outdoor grill-the tailgating kind. Why?

Seeing him walking toward her made her think about Chuck and Frost. They seemed to be in a satisfactory place. Stephen's reactions to Frost and to Chuck when he'd shown up at RI had made changes in them both—in how they felt about themselves, and in how Chuck felt about his mom. Frost was Frost. She would never be easy. But she was a remarkable woman, and she was deeply repentant about what she had done. Sarah had wondered back in Batumi, if she and Frost were friends. The answer was she now knew was _yes._ They were.

Frost had left town for a few days. She'd gone back to DC to finish up work-related things there. Frost too, believe it or not, was leaving the spy life. She had retired. It had taken all the life she was willing to give, she said.

Chuck got to Sarah and gave her a grin that told her he was up to something. Of course, the grill clutched clumsily under his arm had given that away anyway. He sat it down and leaned over and kissed her—much more deeply and hungrily than she'd expected.

"Wow. I should let you go run errands more often! What was that all about?"

"That was all about making sure you know how all about you I am, baby." Chuck's grin remained.

"I got a call from Robeck on the way here. The CIA is going to give up these apartments soon and she's going to make sure you and I, and Ellie and Devon, are given the first option to rent them. I checked on movers. We can get our stuff from DC, from both apartments, shipped here, as well as our cars. Mom's planning on remaining bi-coastal for a while. What do you want to do?"

Sarah was sure. "I want to stay here. No more DC for me. We can always stay at your mom's, if we find some reason to go back, or if we want to visit her while she's there. Do you think Ellie and Devon will want to move here too?"

Chuck smiled. "Yeah, sis _hates_ the winter. Mom just told me they both have interviews with the UCLA Medical Center. If those jobs work out, they'll resign from the CIA. Robeck wasn't happy about that, but, nonetheless, Mom's sure she put in a call to the folks at UCLA. I think their chances are good. But, whether they get that job or not, they are both remarkable doctors. They'll find work. It looks like we'll be neighbors."

Sarah sat for a while, a touch delirious, a huge smile on her face. She had daydreamed about this while she'd believed Chuck was Chuck Bartowski—about living here, about being near Ellie and Devon. And now it looked like it would happen.

After a moment, she noticed that Chuck was checking his watch.

"What is it, Chuck?"

Sarah noticed a man walking toward them. An agent: Sarah knew it immediately. She tensed. Chuck saw it. "It's ok, Sarah, I'm expecting him." The man was carrying a briefcase. It was chained to his wrist.

Chuck stood up and took a step toward the agent. The agent took a picture out of his pocket and looked at it, then looked at Chuck.

"Code phrase?"

" _Overcoming Life Church_."

The agent nodded once sharply. Chuck fished around in his pocket and produced a key. Sarah, puzzled, stood, better to see what was happening. Chuck unlocked the chain. The agent took out his phone.

"Package delivered."

A moment later, Chuck's phone rang. He answered it. "Package received."

The man shook Chuck's hand, glanced curiously at Sarah, and left.

"Chuck, what's going on?" Sarah could feel her pulse race.

Chuck didn't answer. He turned and put the briefcase on the side of the fountain. Then he removed the top of the grill. Leaning it against the fountain, Chuck used the key he still had in his hand to unlock the briefcase. Opened, he stepped back so that Sarah could see.

In the briefcase was a thick file. On the top of it was a photograph of Sarah—a photograph maybe a couple of years old.

As Sarah reached into the briefcase and picked up the picture, Chuck explained: "Mom got the Oversight Committee to force the CIA to give this up. It's Graham's file on you. So far as Mom could determine, it is the only non-redacted version of your file that exists, electronically or on paper. Graham was jealous of it. Mom and I arranged to get it here. She FedExed me the key yesterday."

Sarah's eyes filled with tears. "But, why, Chuck?"

"Because…because I was thinking, thinking about us the other day, about our mission to Batumi and that Orthodox Church, remember?"

Sarah smiled wetly and nodded. "Anathema."

"Yeah, right. That got me thinking about Orthodoxy—in particular, a story I read about Orthodox Christians in Russia. When the revolutionaries took over, and when the churches were closed, many of the faithful snuck in and retrieved the icons—the paintings of the saints and prophets, of Jesus and Mary and the angels—and stole them away.

"Keeping them was dangerous, but the believers didn't want them in the hands of infidels. So, many of the icons were burned. The phrase that I read, and saw in my head the other day, was this: 'They burned their icons with reverent fire'. I don't know—that made me think of this file, its _iconicity_ for you—and for me. And I thought…"

Sarah handed Chuck the photograph. She reached into the briefcase and took out the entire file. "Do you have a match, Chuck?"

He put the photograph down on the fountain, and pulled a book of paper matches from his pocket. Sarah put the file in the concavity of the grill. Chuck handed her the matches.

They stood for a moment, looking down at the file—then Sarah lit a match and held it to a couple of the loose pages. The nascent flames flickered for a moment and then gained strength. A moment later, the file was burning in earnest. Sarah reached over and took Chuck's hand.

He looked at her. "Do you know what today is?" Sarah thought for a moment, then shook her head. "One year ago today I met with Graham about an agent named Sarah Walker and about a mission in Burbank. One year ago today I saw that file. I had no idea…"

Sarah took hold of Chuck's shirt and drew him to her. They kissed as the file burnt. When the kiss ended, the file was nearly gone. Sarah reached over and picked up the photograph of her.

"Should we keep that?" Chuck asked. Sarah scrutinized the photograph. She'd been older then. She was younger now.

"No, Chuck, we don't need a photograph of Agent Walker. She's in the past, with Agent Carmichael. It's just Sarah and Chuck now." She dropped the picture into the waning flames. It caught the flames, burned.

"You know, Sarah, there is still one copy of that file…"

She smiled at him. "I know it. In your head. But my past is safe there, Chuck, and my future is in your hands." She leaned in to kiss him again, spies no more.

* * *

THE END

* * *

 **A/N2** Cue Modern English's "I Melt With You", the exeunt theme as our players leave the stage.

Apologies to Bob Dylan for stealing the line from "My Back Pages".

* * *

A hearty thanks here to WvonB, Grayroc, David Carner, Rachel Smith Cobleigh and michaelfmx for looking over chapter drafts, talking about writing, and providing inspiration and good cheer. I'm in your debt.

To those who have reviewed the story—especially those who have done so faithfully, chapter after chapter—thank you so much. While a writer writes to be read, nothing is better than being read and then told about the reading. When a story is in progress in real time, as this one was, reviews from good readers are the only way the writer has of telling whether it's working or not.

* * *

I am not leaving. I will still be around and be reading. But, as I said a few chapters back, I have no plans to do any further writing. I have a finished draft of an original spy novel now and want to spend the extra time I have used for this story (and the others) re-drafting that.

* * *

I didn't know fanfiction existed until a year ago, roughly. I had not thought about writing fiction. Reading Chuck fanfiction changed that. I've really enjoyed writing for you, good folks.

Speaking of which, I do plan a Postlude to this story. I am going to take a break and head to a lake. Read some Thoreau and Merleau-Ponty, hang out with my wife and my kids. So, I don't expect to start on the Postlude until next week sometime. But it will post eventually: tune in for Chapter 37 "The Prose of the World".

Please, please—do me a solid: write a review. Let me know about the final chapter and the story as a whole. (Throw me a bone!)

It's been fun. Bye for now!

Zettel


	37. Chapter 37: The Prose of the World

**A/N** It's hard to say goodbye. Didn't plan even to start this until next week, then it came to me in a flash.

Thanks, everyone!

Don't own Chuck.

* * *

 **Turned Tables**

 _Postlude: The Prose of the World_

* * *

Two Years Later  
Undisclosed Location

* * *

Given the contorted position of her body, Sarah could see just enough of the window to look at the sky—dark, starry. She had lost track of time—the exhaustion and the pain combined with her emotional upheaval made every moment seem eternal, and every eternity a moment. Time grew and shrank, and grew and shrank. She could not keep it.

There was a clock on the wall, but it was not working. Its battery must have been nearly dead: its red second hand kept trying to tick, but it could not move past the little line that marked three minutes after the hour. It was stuck, fretting uselessly but unmoving—a first-time hurdler terrified before a high hurdle.

It had been 6:03 forever; it had never yet been 6:03.

 _Damn_.

Chuck was bent over her, his eyes a bustling brown paisley of worry and doubt and excitement. He reached out to brush her sweat-soaked bangs off her forehead. He was searching out her eyes, but he kept checking where her hands were. The red welt and bluing bruise on his cheek told the story of why. She had hit him—hard. She hated that she had done that—but he'd been reciting some nonsense rhyme by Nash he'd read when a boy (to her, Chuck's memory was almost always a blessing—but sometimes _not_ ). He'd told her its title was "The Grackle":

The grackle's voice is less than mellow,  
His heart is black, his eye is yellow,  
He bullies more attractive birds  
With hoodlum deeds and vulgar words,  
And should a human interfere,  
Attacks that human in the rear.  
I cannot help but deem the grackle  
An ornithological debacle.

Sarah had been ok—she'd even laughed a bit as the poem started, but then, a sudden searing pain gripped her, like her abdomen was trying to squeeze her body into two separate parts, and she'd suddenly been _so mad at him_ for doing this to her, that her hand whipped out and knocked him flat right on 'debacle'.

"I'll attack you in the rear!" she'd threatened. "You did this to me!"

Poor Chuck. He'd sat on the floor rubbing his jaw while the doctors and nurses rushed from her to him. But he hadn't been angry, not even embarrassed. He stood up with a little help, weaved a little in place, and then smiled at her.

"You know, every now and then, I forget that you belong to Shakespeare's _guard of honor_ …"

Sarah had been confused—and she had started to get mad again. But Chuck stepped toward her, although staying out of her reach, hands up, a supplicant. He'd offered an explanation: "'They that have the power to hurt but will do none…' It's the opening line of Sonnet 94…But will do none _usually,_ I guess." He'd used his hand to swing his jaw from side to side gingerly.

"Oh, Chuck, I love you, and I am very, very sorry, but no more—who was that, Ogden Nash?—I am trying to have our baby."

Chuck had beamed at her, the punch immediately forgotten. "I know. Sorry. I was just trying to distract you. Wrong tactic, I guess."

"Well, wrong poem, anyway." She had felt embarrassed, contrite. She noticed that the medical staff was glancing at her hands too.

 _Great,_ she'd thought, _now everyone in the room is afraid of the woman in labor_.

}o{

Sarah had no idea labor would be so _laborious_. She'd expected pain. She'd gone through years of training herself to ignore pain, so she hadn't been dreading that part too much. But there was so much pain and it was so different from anything she'd ever faced, so all-consuming. And it was so much work. Her body was doing something possible and impossible all at the same time. She wanted to tell the doctor they weren't contractions, they were _damn contradictions._

She'd been in labor over 28 hours. The problem, the doctor told her, was that she was dilating so slowly.

He asked about how she felt—not physically, but emotionally. She told him: "More excited and more terrified, both, than I have ever been in my life." He'd nodded and told her that her emotions had created a physical stasis—her body was trying to have the baby and not to have it too. _See, I told you, contradictions_. But he'd patted her arm and told her this was not uncommon with first babies. She just needed to get her mind on something else.

 _Yeah, right_.

That was when Chuck had launched into Nash.

}o{

She looked at her husband and felt love for him tsunami over her. She started to cry. She looked up into his eyes and kissed his hand.

"Chuck, sweetheart, I am so sorry. I really love you—all my heart, to the core. _We_ did this to me, to us. I wanted this—I _want_ this so much. The last nine months, this life inside me, this peanut growing and moving, it's been the most amazing thing...

"Thank you for it. Don't hold…the punch against me, please."

Chuck grinned at her and stepped away. He grabbed a chair from against the wall, pulled it toward her—but not too close—and he sat down.

"So, I talked to Mom. She said she will be back in a little while. Today is one of Dad's good days and he won't leave her alone about the baby. He wants to be here. He's like a kid on Christmas, she said."

Sarah felt warmth syrup through her, slowly, head to toe. _Grandpa. Grandma_.

Chuck looked at his watch. "I expect them in the next little while."

"What about Ellie and Devon?"

"Any minute."

}o{

 _Chuck had gone out to get a cup of coffee earlier and had sought out his sister. He found her in her lab. Devon was there too._

 _Devon had just made a comment about getting Ellie a new lab coat_ , _since the one she was wearing was inadequate to cover her belly._

 _"You know, Devon, instead of smirking at my belly, you could help me get these reports done so that we can be ready to go and see Sarah and the baby when it arrives. Have you finished rounds?"_

 _Devon grinned. "Done, babe. Nothing on the agenda but you," he reached out to put his hand on her belly, "this little one still traveling, and the one about to arrive." He gave Ellie a kiss, and she drew him closer and deepened it for a moment. When he stepped back he looked pleased and dazed. "Awesome…"_

 _"Ahem! Hey, guys. The doctor told me that he thinks it won't be too long now. Just wanted to give you the heads-up, oh, and grab some coffee." Chuck held up the steaming cup._

 _"We'll be there, brother-of-mine, don't worry. I haven't been able to concentrate all day. Sarah's ok?"_

 _"She'd getting frustrated—which probably isn't helping. I've been trying to distract her…"_

 _"Chuck…" Ellie began, a warning tone in her voice._

 _"No, no, sis. I've been careful. No comic book readings-aloud. No playing of Arcade Fire deep cuts. I was thinking maybe I could recite a poem or something…"_

 _"Chuck, I know you forget nothing, and I know you worship that woman_ , _but re-think your strategy. Just be there for her, make sure she knows how excited you are—but don't put any pressure on her. She's put enough on herself. I've never seen anyone who wanted to be a mom so bad who was also so worried about being one."_

 _"She'll be great," Devon boomed, although he did not mean to be talking loudly. He heard his own voice and looked chagrined as he continued, lowering his volume, "I mean she was Teacher of the Year at the Early Education Center. Those kids love her and she loves them. She's patient and kind and clever. She's brimming with love. Why's she worried?"_

 _"She's not. And she is." Chuck said, thinking. "She knows she is different, that she found herself. She's been so happy. We've been so happy. But she knows who she was for a long time…I guess she worries that some night Agent Walker will steal into the house and, clandestinely, replace her, send Sarah away into a dark oblivion, turn me back into an asset…"_

 _Ellie had walked close to Chuck as he said this, and she hugged him. "It's ok, Chuck. You aren't worried about that, are you."_

 _He brightened, shook off the chill that gripped him for a moment. "No, really, I'm not. But I try hard to imagine it from Sarah's perspective, to make sure I understand why she is worried about it, what the worry is. And, anyway, I don't mean she worries about this all the time or anything. No, nothing like that. I guess it's her form of_ The Dark Night of the Soul _. But I do think she's worried more as the due date's gotten nearer."_

 _Ellie nodded. "Well, almost every woman has these moments as things get near," she glanced down at herself, a confession, "it's not surprising that Sarah's would take that form. She is happy, Chuck. A little deliriously so most of the time. It's almost unnerving. Don't worry. Speaking of which, you'd better get back, or she will become unhappy."_

 _Chuck looked at his watch and winced. "Right, right. So, you guys will be there soon?"_

 _Ellie nodded._

 _"Um, Ellie," Devon started, "are you sure its ok for a pregnant woman to be in the room with a woman giving birth?"_

 _Ellie looked at him—lost._

 _"I mean couldn't you get that sympathy pregnancy thingy?"_

 _"Devon, aren't you a cardiologist? Men get sympathy pregnancy. I am really pregnant. You were, um, there when it happened, remember?"_

 _Ellie turned from Devon, shaking her head. "Chuck, get going." He started to leave the lab. "Wait, Chuck. No poetry."_

 _"Really, not even a short one, maybe a nonsense poem? Ogden Nash, maybe? I'm just so happy!"_

 _"Chuuuuck…"_

 _Devon spoke as Ellie drew out Chuck's name. "Dude, that woman'll hit you!"_

}o{

From his chair, Chuck piped up. "Oh, I called Casey, too. He made me promise to deliver a message verbatim: "'Oorah, Sarah!'"

Sarah started to giggle just as the next contraction arrived. _Blinding pain_. The doctor told her she had finally dilated enough—things were starting to get serious.

 _Starting to? Hell_.

She looked at Chuck as the contraction ended. "Are he and Ilsa still planning to come to town?" She was trying to keep her mind occupied—her body certainly was.

"Yeah, this weekend. Casey rotates off at the base for a few days, and Ilsa's classes at UCSD are Tuesday, Thursday, so they'll be here sometime Thursday night, looks like."

She was trying to relax, trying to ignore the doctor and the nurse. She closed her eyes.

Casey and Ilsa. Together. The thought made her happy, helped her relax.

Thinking of couples brought Stephen and Frost to her mind, their odd, strobe-light life, with Stephen's good days and bad days. Luckily, the bad days weren't bad—except in a comparative sense.

On the bad days, Stephen just forgot that it wasn't long ago, forgot that son and daughter were now adults. He was normally cheerful on those days, if foggy, although his anxiety about Frost's next mission—he always thought there would be one, because there always had been one for so long—sometimes made him peevish. But that usually passed with a little reassurance from Frost.

The one thing that was common to his good and bad days was his love for his wife and his children. While it was sometimes confused, it never waned. Sarah knew that Chuck had inherited his gift for loving largely from Stephen. But Frost had contributed to it too.

Frost had worked hard, if mostly silently, to repair her relationship with Chuck. She did it as much as anything by spending time with him and with Sarah. Although there were a few times when Sarah was tempted to strangle her (Frost's penchant for somehow always knowing things could be a trial, like when Sarah and Chuck had a disagreement, or when Sarah had first gotten pregnant), for the most part, she found her friendship with her mother-in-law a blessing. And it turned out that what Chuck needed most from his mom what was she was giving him. Time.

Frost was actually the one who brought Sarah to the hospital. They hadn't expected the baby for a few more days. Chuck was splitting time between The Clown School and RI—and he'd been in the lab at RI.

}o{

 _Julie had come to the apartment a few days after Chuck and Sarah got back from their honeymoon. She had kept in touch with them, and had attended the wedding._

 _Julie had started by facing Sarah. "So, Sarah, if Chuck is interested, and if you are ok with it, I'd like to offer Chuck a job at RI. I would like him to work in Research and Development, but freelance, as it were." She rotated in her chair toward Chuck. "I know how creative you are, Chuck, how gifted. I'll pay you to think and tinker, basically, although anything you create will ultimately be RI's, I will pay you well to do it, and make sure you get both credit for whatever you invent, and a share of any profits it generates. And, keep in mind, you won't be working with me, but for me. We may see each other once in a while, since I will be around, and I hope Sarah won't mind that, but I want you to work for me, Chuck, and I would like us," she looked earnestly at Sarah, "all of us, to be friends."_

 _Chuck had looked at Sarah and she'd taken his hand, squeezed it, and nodded. He grinned at her and then at Julie. "It's a deal."_

 _The arrangement worked out. They had all become friends. Julie often invited them to the fancy RI shindigs, giving Sarah and Chuck a chance to dress up and hobnob with the champagne set. Sarah loved it since she loved Chuck in a tux._

 _And, it turned out, Chuck and Julie saw each other at work infrequently. Her calendar was normally full to bursting, and Chuck often worked from home, sitting at the kitchen table with a pencil, eraser, graph paper, and muttering to himself._

}o{

They'd managed to time Sarah's pregnancy so that her due date was during the summer, when she did not teach. With some help from Beckman, Sarah had truncated the time it took her to get her teaching certificate. Oddly enough, it had been Chris Parks who'd helped get Sarah her position at The Early Education Center.

}o{

 _Sarah had run into Parks on the street in DC. Sarah and Chuck were in town, making sure that their belongings got safely packed and shipped to California. Sarah was running errands and looked up into Chris' face._

 _Sarah almost hadn't recognized her. The exhaustion and unhappiness that had muted her attractiveness in Romney were wholly gone. She looked good._

 _"Chris!"_

 _"Sarah? Sarah Walker?"_

 _"Yes, it's me. How are you, Chris? You look terrific!"_

 _"Thanks, Sarah. I feel pretty terrific. I'm working as a translator in town. I like the work. Fewer…scopes…if you know what I mean." Sarah gave a quick nod. "I met a man, a diplomat from Australia…It's still new, but it's good, you know?"_

 _"Yes," Sarah offered softly, "I do."_

 _"What about you—and Chuck?"_

 _"We've left the CIA. We're relocating to LA. We're getting married, Chris." Sarah could hear the thrill in her voice as she said it, and hoped Chris wouldn't take it the wrong way._

 _She didn't. To Sarah's surprise, Chris hugged her, hard. "Good for you, Sarah! And good for Chuck! I have been pulling for you two."_

 _Chris released the hug but stayed close to Sarah. "Too bad and not too bad—what happened to Graham, huh?"_

 _"Yes, I guess. I mean I didn't want him dead, especially not that way, but I can't say I mourned his passing."_

 _"No one did," Chris offered, her voice quiet. "I actually went to the funeral. Other than some politicians there to be seen doing their duty, I was almost half the people present. Fitting, I guess. He sent so many of us to unmarked, unmourned graves…_

 _"Is civilian life agreeing with you, Sarah?" Parks spoke up as she changed topics._

 _"Yes, it is. I'm thinking about becoming a teacher, maybe a kindergarten teacher."_

 _"Wait. And you are in LA? My uncle, my dad's brother, is the principal at a school there…in Burbank, I think."_

 _"That's where we are!"_

 _"Well, when you are ready to look for work, let me know. I'll call him. He always doted on me. Never had kids of his own. Too busy raising the kids of others, he always said."_

 _"Thanks, Chris."_

 _"Not a problem. I hope everything works out—for both of us."_

 _"Me, too."_

}o{

 _While they were in DC, Sarah and Chuck had gone out a couple of times with Carina and Martin. Martin had headed back to DC because of work, and Carina had followed as soon as she could. She'd recovered almost completely from her wounds, although she was still limping. But the therapist told her that was likely to go away as she got stronger._

 _Carina had admitted before she left that she and Martin were…dating. But that was all she would say. Sarah knew for a fact that soon after Carina had returned to DC, they were dating exclusively, although Carina would never admit to it. But the decisive give-away was her behavior at the club they all went to one night._

 _Carina normally danced for every man in the house—and then she chose her favorite among the willing sacrifices her dancing created. But on that night, she had danced for Martin, and with him. And she had seemed as much his willing sacrifice as he had seemed hers. Sarah wasn't absolutely sure it would work out—Carina was, after all, mercurial._

 _But two brushes with death, the last one much more than a brush, really, had changed her. She was no longer as spendthrift with her…affections…or her life. Martin, for his part, was a goner—hook, line, and redhead. He'd follow her to the ends of the earth, if she was going that far. Sarah suspected Carina wasn't. She suspected Carina was interested in sticking closer to…home._

 _The suspicion proved to be right. Carina was still dating Martin exclusively, but she still would not admit it._

}o{

Sarah fell back against the pillows in relieved, utterly happy exhaustion. _A girl_. Healthy, ten fingers, ten toes, a tuft of dark brown hair and eyes so intensely blue and captivating they seemed electromagnetized. Chuck was over by the baby's bed, holding her. His dad was looking down at her. Frost was standing next to Sarah, smiling, dividing her attention between Dad and Grandad, and Sarah. She was holding Sarah's hand.

Ellie was talking to one of the nurses, making sure everything was done correctly for _her niece_. Devon just kept muttering "Awesome!" to himself.

Sarah's mom was on Sarah's other side, Molly on her lap, and Emma reached out to touch Sarah's face gently. "I love you, Sarah, and I love that little one. She's so beautiful it makes my chest hurt to look at her."

Sarah smiled, the tears that had been coming and going since the birth coming again. "Thanks, Mom." Sarah grinned at Molly. "Guess who is an Auntie!" Molly grinned back at her, not fully understanding, but responding to the happiness that warmed and filled the room.

Chuck's phone vibrated in his pocket. He carried the little girl to Sarah and handed her over reverently. "Here she is, Mom." His look at Sarah thieved her breath. He stepped away and answered the phone.

Sarah's heart had been full—it was now running over. "C'mere, baby girl."

"So," Frost asked, "what's my granddaughter's name?"

Sarah frowned slightly. She looked at Chuck, talking on the phone. "We still haven't decided."

Chuck stepped toward her, extending the phone. "It's Jan and Liz. Liz is on. She says she has some suggestions for little Carmichael's name…" Chuck's eyes had gotten big. Nearly two years later, and Chuck had still not recovered from Liz and Carina's tag-team toast at the wedding.

As Sarah took the phone, she heard her mom ask Frost, "How did Chuck get that bruise?"

* * *

 **Final A/N** Thanks, again, everyone. I have enjoyed writing here, writing for all of you. Parting thought or comment? Drop me a review or PM. See ya 'round!

-Z


End file.
